


The Proper Protocols

by earlgreytea68



Series: Jadenvale and Euphonia [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: F/F, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-05
Updated: 2016-12-03
Packaged: 2018-08-29 06:17:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 29
Words: 41,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8478460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/earlgreytea68/pseuds/earlgreytea68
Summary: There are wedding negotiations. Archer would prefer not to have negotiations around his wedding. Archer would prefer to just get married. So would Bennet.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I don't actually do NaNo--NaNo and I have a fraught relationship--so this isn't actually a NaNo project, but it is something I've been working on more steadily as it has started to take shape in my head, so I figured I'd start posting it for people who like that sort of thing and are looking to kill some time. It isn't at all what I intended for the sequel to "Proper Form of Address" but it's how it's shaping up to be and I think it's the right story. 
> 
> So far. 
> 
> Hopefully.
> 
> Note it's not even titled yet.

Archer, Only Prince of Jadenvale, was mired in a dinner that he _hated_. It should have been a simple family dinner but there was really no such thing as a simple family dinner when your sister was a queen and when your newly intended betrothed was the king of the kingdom next door. Alexandra, his sister the Queen, kept talking about marriage pacts and dowry settlements and treaty modifications and title negotiations. Bennet, his betrothed the King, was responding to everything Alex said lightly, without concern, as if exactly what you should be worrying about on the day when you settled on your happily ever after was fucking _caravan rights_.

 

“The mountains, though, on the western border have always been the site of difficult conflicts,” Alex said in that queenly-wise tone of voice that Archer always hated. Alex had been his queen as well as his sister since their parents had died when Archer had been only five, so Archer couldn’t remember if Alex had always had that tone of voice or if she’d developed it, but either way, Archer _hated_ it. It was on his list of Things He Was Hating Right Now.

 

Bennet was not quite on that list of Things He Was Hating Right Now, because Bennet’s hand was high on Archer’s thigh in a very un-kingly-like manner, but Bennet was otherwise also using a King-In-All-Caps tone of voice and Archer wasn’t a huge fan of that, either.

 

“It’s because their climate is gentler than the graveyard,” Bennet replied to Alex.

 

“Obviously,” said Alex, sweetly but with steel in her harbor-blue gaze, “but the treaty forged long ago calls for neutrality along that border, with an _uninhabited_ no-man’s-land.”

 

“Or no-woman’s-land,” contributed Bennet’s sister Ava, who looked as pleased as Archer was with the dinner conversation, although she mainly looked bored instead of annoyed.

 

Everyone looked at her.

 

“Just saying.” Ava shrugged and bit into a strawberry. “If the treaty says it has to be a no-man’s-land, I say we move a bunch of Euphonian and Jadenvalian women in there and have at it.”

 

Archer’s lips twitched.

 

His other sister, Princess Alice, stared at Ava open-mouthed.

 

Ava winked at her and held up another strawberry and said, “These are _delicious_.”

 

Bennet turned from Ava without any real acknowledgment of her, because Bennet was used to his sister’s attempts at distraction. He said, “We didn’t have this discussion when you were sending Archer to Euphonia to marry Ava. I’m not sure why it would be appropriate to have this discussion now.”

 

“Because we sent Archer to Euphonia to marry _Ava_ ,” Alex rejoined. “That deal had been fully negotiated. That is no longer the deal on the table. A new deal must be negotiated.”

 

Bennet lifted an eyebrow, and his voice was dry when he applied. “The new deal on the table is a much better deal.”

 

“Thanks, Bennet,” said Ava.

 

“You think because you’re a king we should merely _give_ Archer away?” asked Alex sharply, ignoring Ava’s interjection.

 

“I think Archer’s sitting right here,” retorted Bennet icily, “and everything about this conversation is inappropriate at the moment.”

 

There was a long moment of silence, then Alex relented, sending a smile Archer’s way. “Of course. Forgive me. Of course. There was meant to be a celebratory dinner.”

 

“Was it?” asked Archer sardonically. “A celebration of what?”

 

“You and the King, of course,” said Alex.

 

“Bennet,” said Archer. “His name is Bennet.”

 

“Yes,” Alex agreed affably. “You and Bennet.”

 

***

 

“A _celebration_ ,” Archer fumed in Bennet’s room, throwing himself onto the bed. “Of _us_. Does she really believe that? While I’m talked about like an animal at auction? Why the fuck is your room nicer than mine? This is a _guest_ room.”

 

“I assumed it was Jadenvalian hospitality being shown off.” Bennet sank onto the bed next to him.

 

Archer broached the topic that was really most concerning to him. “She isn’t going to forbid me to marry you over the no-man’s-land in the western mountains.”

 

“I would assume not. She loves you.”

 

“‘You would assume not’?” Archer repeated in horror. “No! The response to that question is _no_. She isn’t going to forbid me to marry you over any fucking diplomatic stupidity. She isn’t going to forbid me to marry you, _period_. I’m marrying you. She isn’t going to stop it.”

 

“No one’s going to stop it,” said Bennet soothingly, and leaned forward to brush kisses over Archer’s freckles. “You’re worrying over nothing. This was just the usual posturing. We’ll open the negotiations and they’ll go smoothly. It’s a better offer for you than the one with Ava was, she can’t really press for anything we wouldn’t be able to give.”

 

“I don’t want her to press for anything,” complained Archer. “I don’t want any negotiations opened. I just want to get married.”

 

“I know,” said Bennet.

 

Archer knew that he did, and that it was unfair to be burdening him with all of this, when who he was wasn’t exactly his fault. He said, “She knows you want me. She could be ruthless with you.”

 

“She knows _you_ want _me_ ,” Bennet corrected him softly, hand brushing through his hair. “I don’t know why she would be.”

 

Archer frowned at the ceiling and didn’t voice the doubt he had that his sister loved him as much as Bennet seemed to think she did. Alex definitely loved him in her own way, which was the way of a queen, abstractly, with a valuable, clever prince in her pocket who could be played for good benefit. Bennet loved him not as a king but as a man, which was a dangerous way for a king to love.

 

“Anyway.” Bennet nosed behind Archer’s ear. “I’d start a war over you, you know that.”

 

“I do,” said Archer. “That’s what frightens me.”

 

There was a knock on Bennet’s door.

 

“What’s that?” Bennet asked. “Servants to turn the bed down?”

 

“You’re probably right,” said Archer. “My sister’s probably going overboard with the Jadenvalian hospitality.”

 

Bennet rolled easily off the bed to put some respectable space between them and called, “Come in!”

 

The man who came in was Alex’s majordomo, a sharp-faced man named Roderick who always seemed to be looking down his nose at everyone. He said, “Your Majesty,” to Bennet and then, “Your Highness,” to Archer, stiffly, as if it pained him.

 

“This is Roderick,” Archer said to Bennet. “Basically Alex’s second-in-command.”

 

“Ah,” said Bennet, and Archer watched him shift himself back into king mode, and hated that Alex had sent Roderick and triggered that reaction. “Hello. What can I do for you?”

 

“I have come to escort Prince Archer back to his room,” said Roderick.

 

Archer said, “You’ve come to _what_?”

 

Roderick looked unimpressed by the exclamation. “It’s merely protocol. The formal negotiatios have not been concluded. Queen Alexandra recognizes that this is a unique situation and allowed for you to meet unchaperoned just now but the formalities must be—”

 

“Hey,” said Bennet to Archer, voice soft, and brushed a kiss into his hair. “Take a breath.”

 

Archer realized he was actually vibrating with anger, so it was a good thing Bennet said it to him. He took a deep breath.

 

Bennet said to Roderick, “Of course, we wish to observe all proper royal protocols.” Bennet turned to Archer and executed a very deep bow over Archer’s hand. “My beloved prince,” he said formally, “I take your leave.”

 

Archer gaped at him. “ _What_?”

 

“Really, Eminence, it’s vitally important that we do this correctly, and that I show Queen Alexandra, through my behavior, how very much I respect the value of your royal person.”

 

Archer opened and closed his mouth and then gave up. Everyone was going _insane_. “Fine,” he said. “But if I sneak out and go into town tonight, it’s all your fault.” Which was an empty threat but all he had to give.

 

Bennet’s striking blue eyes were twinkling at him, so Archer thought it clear that he also knew the threat was empty. “Her Majesty Queen Alexandra and I will discuss it,” he said.

 

Archer scowled and marched out of Bennet’s room and all the way to his own, Roderick tagging along behind.

 

***

 

Archer was woken in the night by Bennet’s voice murmuring, “Make way, Eminence,” and nudging him over in the bed.

 

Archer blinked himself awake, looking up at Bennet in surprise. “What are you…” He wasn’t awake enough to make the rest of the question coherent.

 

Bennet said, “Silly prince, _of course_ I’m not complying with the royal protocols. We’ve literally fucked all of them out the window, haven’t we?”

 

“But you told Roderick—”

 

“Because that’s how you play the game, Archer.” Bennet, settling against him, sounded tired. “You tell people that they want to hear and it generally gets you what you want. Which was a relaxed guard. Oh, and also, you have terraces all over this palace leading to open doors. It’s the least secure palace I can imagine.”

 

“I had my door open because I was going to sneak out,” Archer said.

 

“Liar.” Archer could hear the smile in Bennet’s voice. “You were sound asleep.”

 

“I was resting up before going out,” Archer responded primly.

 

Bennet shifted up onto his elbow. Archer looked at the silhouette of him in the darkness. “This isn’t a royal wedding to me, Archer. If it seems like I’m treating it that way, it’s because that’s what I have to do to get what I want. And what I want is you. Not the no-man’s-land in the western mountains or anything else your sister can dream up. I just want you. I just want Archer and Bennet. If that means I have to get King of Euphonia and Prince of Jadenvale together, too, so be it.”

 

Archer couldn’t really see the expression on Bennet’s face, but he looked up at him anyway, trying to peer through the darkness. Archer hated everything about this that made them royalty instead of just _them_ , but he knew that Bennet knew that, and he trusted Bennet to have their best interests as a couple at heart. He said, “Okay.”

 

“So can you go along with it for a bit? With all of the annoying trappings of it?”

 

“Is that how I get you?”

 

“Unfortunately, yes. I think there’s no other way.”

 

“Then yes. As long as you need me to. I’ll be the perfect prince.”

 

***

 

Archer was regretting that the next day when, over a private family breakfast, Alex said, “Assuming the wedding negotiations are successful, we’ll be expected to host a ball, so you should start planning that.”

 

“Assuming they’re successful?” said Archer.

 

“Naturally they will be,” said Alex comfortingly, and bit into a scone slathered with marmalade.

 

Archer looked at his own untouched scone and took a deep breath. “Alex, I really love him, right? I really want this to be my future. I really want this.” Archer ventured a glance at Alex.

 

She was unreadable to him. “I know that. I’m aware of how you feel about him. Do you think I’m not taking that into account? I’m hurt that you think that. It’s a same-sex marriage from which no children will result to continue the line. The heir to the Euphonian throne will be Ava’s child. This is not a permanent alliance between the countries, it’s one that will die with you, and the fact that I am even considering it is because of my great regard for you, Arch.”

 

Archer wished he hadn’t brought it up. He wished he hadn’t mentioned anything. He looked at the scone on his plate and felt sick to his stomach to hear his relationship cut down like that, smashed into tiny pieces of _no heirs_ and _no future_ and _not permanent_ and _doesn’t make sense_. He’d promised Bennet he was going to be the Only Prince of Jadenvale for him, and instead he’d immediately fucked it up by trying to appeal to Alex as a little brother.

 

He felt vividly lonely, the way he had as a small boy, abruptly orphaned, with sisters who seemed to grow stranger and stranger to him every day. He wanted to curl into a ball and snuffle. He said, and he heard how small his voice was, “He makes me happy.”

 

“Which is not entirely an indulgence that we are necessarily allowed, little Prince,” said Alex, not unkindly.

 

Archer supposed he deserve the _little_ there. He certainly felt like a little Prince at the moment.

 

Alex scraped her chair back from the dining table and stood and walked over to Archer and rested her fingertips lightly in his hair. “Hush now. Don’t worry. Your King has great regard for you. He’ll do what he needs to to—”

 

“But that’s just it.” Archer turned in his chair, grabbing at her hand in his hair and clasping it between his own. “I don’t want you exploit…I don’t want you to take advantage of…I don’t want him to resent…” Archer trailed off helplessly.

 

Alex, after a moment of looking down at him, extricated her hand gently and caressed Archer’s cheek tenderly. “Little Prince. This is the price of doing business. He knows it well. Don’t worry.”

 

Alex walked out of the room.

 

Archer looked across at Alice, who had been silent through the entire exchange, and said miserably, “The price of doing _business_. _Exactly_. Fuck.”

 

***

 

“Why haven’t you tried to do it with me?” Ava asked Bennet.

 

Bennet looked at her. She was dressed in Jadenvalian bathing clothes, sprawled out on a chair by what she termed the swimming pool, basking in the sunlight, her eyes hidden behind sunglasses. Bennet had taken off every Euphonian layer but one and he was still stifling in the heat. Ava had taken to it much better than he was. Maybe he should strip practically naked the way Ava was. Ava looked like a born Jadenvalian.

 

“Tried to do what?” Bennet asked, scuffing his shoe along the edge of the swimming pool, watching pebbles plink into the water.

 

“Tried to marry me off to somebody you could extort a lot of land and power from.”

 

“I did,” said Bennet wryly. “His name was Archer and he turned out to be incredibly impossible to deal with.”

 

Ava laughed. “Right, I know, but someone else. Now that Archer’s off the table.”

 

“You’re having a baby, Ava. And, anyway, the main strategic alliance we need is with Jadenvale, and I’m conveniently taking care of that for you.”

 

“You could marry me off to Alice.”

 

Bennet looked at her reflectively. “Would you like me to?”

 

“No,” said Ava, after a moment. “I don’t like any of this sordidness around what’s going on with you and Archer.”

 

Bennet sighed. “I’m just trying to—”

 

“Oh, I don’t fault you at all. I fault Queen Alexandra for using this as a land grab for Jadenvale. You make her little brother happy. That should be enough for her.”

 

“Things are never that easy for kings and queens,” Bennet said.

 

“I think it would be that easy for you.”

 

“Really? Because not very long ago you told me I was a horrible brother because I was trying to make you marry some man you’d never met.”

 

“But you came to your senses.”

 

“I didn’t come to my senses,” said Bennet. “I fell in love. Because the sensible thing would honestly have been to make you marry Archer and vice versa. I fucked all of this up and I put Euphonia in this position.”

 

Ava looked at Bennet over the top of her sunglasses. “Is that what you think?”

 

“Not really,” said Bennet, and paused. “A little.”

 

“Stop fidgeting around and sit down,” Ava said. “You’re making me anxious.”

 

Bennet obeyed.

 

Ava sat up and said, “You can’t think of Archer as a mistake. If you think of him that way, you need to walk away from him now.”

 

“Archer is the most selfish thing I’ve ever done,” said Bennet.

 

“Archer is a _person_. A really nice person who loves you a lot and deserves to be loved back as a _person_.”

 

“Mom and Dad were so selfish, with The Lake, and they ruined our lives, and I thought that I deserved one grand selfish thing in return, that I deserved Archer, but now I’m here and Queen Alexandra is so cool and collected and making moves on a chessboard and she makes me feel like I’m doing this all wrong. I think she thinks I’m an idiot, for going and losing my head, and she’s going to make me pay for it. And Euphonia shouldn’t get fucked over because I went and fell for the prince of a conniving kingdom.”

 

“Listen to me.” Ava leaned over, taking her brother’s hands in her own, then said nothing.

 

Bennet, after a long moment of silence, said, “What?”

 

“I don’t often get to be the wise one between the two of us, so I’m relishing this.”

 

Bennet huffed out a breath in exasperation. “Oh, for fuck’s sake, Ava—”

 

“You’re not the one making the mistake. Alexandra is. Tell me about Archer.”

 

“Tell you about Archer?” Bennet echoed, bewildered.

 

“Is he clever?”

 

“He’s…blindingly clever.”

 

“Funny?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Kind?”

 

“Incredibly kind. Very sweet. And genuine. Archer’s lovely. You know that. You just said that. Archer’s miraculously lovely.”

 

“Right. You know that. She doesn’t seem to get it. You have Archer. You have the best piece on the board. Fuck her, Bennet. Her and her fucking negotiations. You’re not in a position of weakness here because you have Archer. You’re in the strongest position you could possibly have.”

 

***

 

There was an attendant waiting just inside to take Bennet to Queen Alexandra.

 

Bennet shook his head and said, “Take me to the Prince.”

 

The attendant said, “It was Her Majesty’s instruction that—”

 

“The thing is,” said Bennet, “we have the same rank, Her Majesty and I, and I have been lax in reminding her of that, but the negotiations are on hold for today. It’s a Euphonian holiday. Take me to the Prince.”

 

“I don’t know where he is,” said the attendant primly.

 

“Fine. I’ll find him myself.” Bennet walked away from the attendant, missing the dramatic snap of the royal cloak in his wake. He had only the barest idea of the layout of the palace, and he didn’t really want to goad Alexandra into getting the guards to physically subdue him in some way, so he thought he had to make this fast. “Archer!” he shouted, moving as quickly down the hallway as he could go, peering into rooms as he passed them. He was heading to Archer’s bedchamber, because he didn’t know where else to go, but he wasn’t optimistic Archer would be there during the day.  

 

Archer appeared in a doorway at the end of the hall, looking quizzical. “Hello. Why are you shouting for me?”

 

“I was looking for you,” said Bennet, and swept Archer backward into the room, shut the door, and locked it.

 

“What’s happening? Oh, no. Have you started a war?”

 

“I haven’t started a war. I wanted to see you, that’s all.” Bennet tugged Archer in, bent his face into the crook of Archer’s neck.

 

“You can’t actually see me that way,” Archer pointed out, his fingers lost in Bennet’s hair.

 

“Shut up,” said Bennet against Archer’s skin, and then took a deep breath of him, and then stepped away. “Hi,” he said, feeling the helpless smile on his face. Archer looked lovely, his hair now fully shaggy in the longer Euphonian style, tousled all over his head, and his eyes wide and concerned on Bennet. Bennet shook his head a little. “Don’t look worried. I’m fine.” He leaned forward and brushed a kiss over Archer’s mouth.

 

“I’m trying to be a well-behaved prince for you,” Archer murmured against Bennet’s mouth.

 

Bennet chuckled and caught Archer’s bottom lip between his teeth. “Oh, are you? How’s that going?”

 

“Good,” said Archer, sounding indignant. “I can be an excellent prince when I want to.”

 

“I don’t doubt it,” said Bennet, and pushed Archer’s tumbled hair off of his forehead fondly. “Maybe only one of us can be an ideal royal at a time. It is almost always me—”

 

“Hey,” protested Archer.

 

“—but just now I need a break from…” Bennet hesitated, looking at Archer. He didn’t want to say that he needed a break from trying to pretend to treat Archer as a pawn. He didn’t want Archer having to think that his sister was forcing him into this position. He didn’t want Archer to worry. He just wanted Archer. Which was problematic politically but the easiest thing in the universe personally. Easy like cozy mornings by the fireplace with the snow outside. Easy like that. “I would like a break from being King,” Bennet decided was neutral enough to say.

 

Archer said, “Do you want to go incognito to some seedy bar in town?”

 

“Do you think you could arrange that?”

 

Archer gave him a look. “Please. I’ve been going incognito in seedy bars here for _years_.”

 

“Should I be jealous?” asked Bennet.

 

Archer snorted. “Incredibly jealous of all of the cocktails I’ve drunk without you.”

 

“Make that snorting noise again, it was adorable.”

 

“Shut up,” grumbled Archer.

 

“I’ve never had a cocktail before,” said Bennet.

 

Archer gasped. “Never had a cocktail?! Oh, that settles it, we’re definitely going incognito to a seedy bar.”

 

***

 

It didn’t take much for Archer to go incognito. He didn’t have noticeable looks. Bennet commanded attention even in a place where he’d never been, where they had no reason to know who he was. But Archer faded into the background. And he was okay with that, really, because when all was said and done the only person Bennet had eyes for, the only person he watched with that warm steady gaze, was Archer, and Archer was totally okay with being the only person in the room for the most amazing person in the room.

 

Archer took them to a bar he knew well and was a semi-regular at, so he was guaranteed not to be bothered by the clientele there, who were all used to him. Not the same as being incognito, but same effect, Archer thought. The bar was in a ramshackle building clinging haphazardly to the very last bit of land, so that it hung out over the Bay of Thaddeus. Archer settled them in seats right at the edge, leaving Bennet to contemplate the view of the bay and the rest of the Jadenvale seaside, as he went to fetch them drinks.

 

He came back with two of them and set one in front of Bennet.

 

Bennet turned from his contemplation of the water to contemplate the drink. Then he said mildly, after a moment, “Why’s it blue?”

 

“It’s the color of the bay,” Archer said, and gestured.

 

“I see that. But _why_ is it blue? What makes it blue?”

 

“I don’t know. Whatever’s in it. Try it.” Archer nudged the drink toward Bennet. “It’s called a bay breeze.”

 

Bennet picked up his glass, peering at the blue liquid inside. “A bay breeze. What is that supposed to mean?”

 

“It’s poetic, Bennet. It’s just for fun. Don’t you have sly drink names in Euphonia?”

 

“We drink ale,” said Bennet, “and hot wines and ciders. None of them are blue.”

 

“Well, the first thing I’m going to do as Prince Consort is going to be naming some of those drink something better than ‘hot wine,’ fuck, that’s a terrible name for a drink.”

 

“Is that what you’re going to call yourself? Prince Consort?”

 

Archer blinked. “Oh. I don’t know. I just assumed.”

 

Bennet considered his drink again, and then took a tentative sip. And then lifted his eyebrows. “Oh,” he said. “It’s good!”

 

“You sound shocked,” noted Archer.

 

“Well, it’s _blue_ , Archer, I didn’t expect something that blue to taste good.”

 

“You know it doesn’t matter to me, right? The title. Whatever the title’s supposed to be.”

 

Bennet smiled at him over his drink. “I know. I know you’d rather be—”

 

“Archer and Bennet,” Archer finished. “Which is exactly what we are, at the moment. Finish your bay breeze and then you can try a sunset.”

 

“Is a sunset orange?”

 

“Orange, pink, yellow. All the colors of the sunset.”

 

“I like these colorful drinks,” said Bennet, and looked across at Archer. “It’s a colorful place, Jadenvale.”

 

“Colorful is one word for it,” Archer agreed.

 

“Euphonia isn’t. Will you miss it? All the color? And the…clothes? And the almighty heat?”

 

Archer smiled, because Bennet hadn’t looked anything other than slightly wilted the whole time he’d been in Jadenvale. He said, “Do you think it’s hot? It’s been rather unseasonably cool, actually.”

 

“I’m serious, Archer,” said Bennet, and he did look serious.

 

Archer hesitated, thinking, because he wanted to take this question as seriously as Bennet was asking it. He rubbed his thumb through the condensation on the outside of his glass of bay breeze. And he said, honestly, “Yes. I’ll miss it. But you have a fantastic tailor in Euphonia waiting for me, and I’m kind of depending on you to wrap me up in lots of furs and keep me warm, and I think I can add a little color to the castles, so I think we’ll be okay. And it’s not like we’ll never come back here, right? I was assuming we’d be back.”

 

“Absolutely,” said Bennet. “You can come back whenever you like. I am a little more wedded to Euphonia than you are.”

 

“Interesting choice of word,” remarked Archer.

 

Bennet winced a little. “I didn’t mean it that way.”

 

“Would you like to go home?” asked Archer.

 

“I’d like to finish up the fucking negotiations and marry you already,” muttered Bennet into his bay breeze, darkly.

 

“Yeah,” said Archer. “Me, too.” There was a moment of silence. Archer ventured, “You know I’m supposed to be planning a ball?”

 

“A ball?” echoed Bennet. “What kind of ball?”

 

“An engagement ball. For you and me.”

 

“Who told you to do that?”

 

“My sister.”

 

“Well, that’s a good sign, then. She thinks the negotiations will be successful.”

 

Archer put his bay breeze down sharply. “Bennet. Why wouldn’t they be successful?”

 

“Sorry,” Bennet said, reaching his hand out to take Archer’s. “I’m sorry.” He placed a soothing kiss on Archer’s knuckles. “They will be. Of course they will be.”

 

Archer looked across at Bennet, thinking, about Bennet wanting a day off, about Bennet looking worried, about his sister treating this like an arm’s-length negotiation. His sister might mean well, thought Archer, but she’d never been in love. She seemed to think Bennet could detach; Archer knew better.

 

“Hey,” said Archer. “Want to get out of here?”

 

***

 

They walked along the busy seaside. Bennet’s eyes were sharp and avid, interested in everything. They stood for a good twenty minutes just watching seafood being fried in hot oil at a restaurant along the cobblestone walkway that lined the beach, Bennet fascinated by the process, which they apparently didn’t have in Euphonia. They spent even more time letting Bennet prowl through the shops, making mental lists of what they ought to buy.

 

“What is this?” Bennet asked, holding up one of the waterscenes popular in Jadenvale, a round clear ball half-filled with bright blue liquid, on which bobbed a boat or a seagull or any manner of other Jadenvalian delights. The one Bennet had was a sailboat.

 

“It’s a waterscene,” Archer said. “You buy it as a souvenir, I guess. Stick it on a side table at home or something.”

 

“Lovely.” Bennet looked delighted. “We make them in Euphonia but they have snow in them. We should buy wagons full of these, we can hand them out as diplomatic gifts to commemorate our wedding.”

 

“We can make special wedding ones,” Archer suggested. “They make them for special occasions.”

 

“Fantastic!” enthused Bennet. “We definitely should.” Bennet put the waterscene down and they exited the cool interior of the sharp, back into the bright white Jadenvalian sunshine.

 

“You should also buy some of the fabric to bring with you to Euphonia,” Bennet said.

 

“It’s too light,” Archer said. “None of it would be appropriate for the temperature.”

 

“Maybe we can improve our dyeing process, then. You should talk to Felix about it. He apprenticed here, he must have ideas.”

 

“You’re very worried about my clothing, I feel,” remarked Archer.

 

“You like your clothes,” Bennet said simply. “You feel better about the part you have to play if you feel like you _look_ the part. I want to make sure you’re comfortable.”

 

Archer hadn’t really thought about his relationship with clothes quite the way. It was true that he did like clothes and got great pleasure out of his wardrobe, but he hadn’t connected it overtly to feeling more comfortable in the skin he had to wear, if the skin was covered by something stunning.

 

Bennet said, “Trix leaves you to your own devices in Jadenvale? I haven’t seen her since I’ve been here.”

 

Archer shook himself out of his contemplation of his complicated relationship with clothing. He said, “Oh, I gave her some time off. Her mom…can be complicated. And I need her less in Jadenvale.”

 

“I don’t think you ever need Trix less,” said Bennet drily. “Isn’t her primary job to protect you from your own foolhardy ideas?”

 

“No,” said Archer primly. “I never have foolhardy ideas.”

 

Bennet laughed. “Of course not. Not you. Never you.”

 

“Your idea was to have me marry your sister, remember?”

 

“You crossed the Graveyard by yourself in Jadenvalian clothing,” Bennet countered.

 

“That was also your fault, you didn’t send me a proper escort.”

 

Bennet caught Archer’s hand suddenly, stopping his forward momentum and pulling him up against him and giving him a smiling kiss, a gentle teasing brush of his lips.

 

Archer stiffened instinctively instead of responding.

 

Bennet drew back, confused, and cocked his head, and then seemed to notice what Archer had immediately become aware of: Most people around them had stopped to stare at them.

 

“Uh-oh,” Bennet murmured. “Have we been recognized?”

 

“No,” Archer whispered. “It’s just not…done here. You and me. People like us. You know. Being like this.” Archer took a careful step away, hoping he didn’t look too awkward.

 

Bennet fell into step behind him, carefully not touching him. “Sorry,” he said. “But it’s odd to be worried about such a thing, isn’t it? I didn’t kiss any of _them_ , why should they take any interest in who I’m kissing?”

 

“I don’t know,” Archer said. “They just don’t approve of it.”

 

After a moment Bennet said, “It must have been horrible, for you, growing up like that.”

 

Archer rounded on him, suddenly miffed. “There were a lot of difficulties about my growing up. I’m not even sure that was in the top ten,” he snapped.

 

Bennet didn’t look the least bit surprised or annoyed by this touchy reaction out of Archer. He said evenly, “I wish you’d been sent to Euphonia ages ago.”

 

Which disarmed Archer, because he realized abruptly that he wished that, too. Bennet was so worried Archer was going to miss Jadenvale, and Archer really missed _Euphonia_ , in a weird way. Well, he missed the way he felt in Euphonia. He missed the way Bennet made him feel. Largely because he’d never known that people could feel that way. Maybe people couldn’t. Maybe he’d unlocked some kind of rare magic. He was grateful to have it at all, but yes, he also wished it had happened earlier.

 

Archer looked at Bennet, who was leaning against the sea wall looking out over the bay, watching the boats bob up and down.

 

_Fuck it_ , Archer thought, and stepped closer to Bennet. Not quite cuddling against him—he wasn’t that daring—but just that little bit closer.

 

Bennet said, “It’s just like a waterscene out there.”

 

“Have you ever been on a boat?” Archer asked.

 

“No,” said Bennet, still looking out over the bay. “My parents…dying on the Lake…”

 

“Fuck,” said Archer, appalled with himself. “I didn’t even think of that. I’m sorry.”

 

“Don’t be.” Bennet shifted to look at Archer. “It was a very different sort of boat on a very different body of water. It wasn’t this. This kind of boat looks lovely.”

 

“I can sail,” Archer heard himself say. “Would you like to go sailing?”

 

Bennet brightened, the sunlight catching his blue eyes. They were a deeper, darker blue here in Jadenvale, Archer thought, picking up the deeper, darker blue of the sea and sky here, not like the ice-blue of the glacier, the washed-out glare of the sun off the snow in Euphonia. He said, “I would love that. When can that be arranged?”

 

“Now,” said Archer. “Right now.”


	2. Chapter 2

Right at the very edge of a long narrow line of rocks jutting out into the bay was a little cluster of moored sailboats bobbing up and down. Bennet followed Archer along the rocks. Archer moved surely and without hesitation. Bennet was pretty sure that any moment he was going to plummet off the rocks and into the deep, dark water on either side of them. He was taking deep breaths in an effort to pretend the prospect wasn’t terrifying to him, considering that Archer was behaving like this was all a casual stroll through town.

 

There was a man sitting in a tiny hut out at the end of the rocks, and he greeted Archer familiarly. “Your Highness! I had heard rumors you had returned from Euphonia.”

 

“I’m back,” Archer said cheerfully. “How’s it doing?”

 

“Still a pretty little thing, wouldn’t you say?” The man gestured toward one of the boats. Bennet couldn’t tell which one.

 

“Lovely,” said Archer. “I’ll take it out for a bit.”

 

“As you wish, your Highness,” said the man. Then he smiled vaguely at Bennet. He asked no further questions.

 

Bennet followed Archer, who was now scrambling down the rocks and over to a dark green boat. Bennet didn’t know much about boats. Its color was the only thing that stood out to him. The rest of the boats were more gaily colored in pinks and purples.

 

Archer gave a precise leap from the last rock into the boat.

 

Bennet stood on the last rock and just lifted his eyebrows at Archer.

 

“It’s just a little jump,” Archer said from the boat.

 

“Come and help me like a proper consort,” Bennet said, because there was no way he was jumping and falling in the water, seeing as he couldn’t _swim_.

 

“Oh, I see,” said Archer, and bowed mockingly low. “Begging your pardon, Excellence.” He held out a hand to Bennet.

 

“You’re cheeky,” Bennet told him, as he took the offered hand. He clung to it fairly tightly as he bridged the gap between the rock and the boat, and when he reached the boat he let out a breath he hadn’t been aware he was hiding. “Do you do this often? Take people out on your boat?”

 

“Only whenever I want to seduce someone,” said Archer, doing something with rope at the other end of the boat. “So yes, fairly often. At least once a week.”

 

“See?” said Bennet. “Cheeky.”

 

Archer grinned at him. “Sit down and enjoy the ride. I am very good at this.”

 

“Do you need help?”

 

“I usually do it solo, so I’m fine. You can be all kingly and be pampered by your consort.”

 

“Pampered by my consort?” echoed Bennet, as he took the invitation and sat. “ _My_ consort? Seems unlikely. Are you sure we’re talking about the same consort?”

 

Archer unfurled a bright white sail that flapped in the breeze. Then he ducked around it, as the boat jerked forward, beginning to slice through the water. And then he sat next to Bennet and smiled widely and kissed him.

 

“Sorry,” he said when he pulled back.

 

“For what? That was lovely. Don’t apologize. In fact, kiss me more.”

 

“For not wanting to kiss you in town. I’m sorry.”

 

“Archer,” said Bennet, and pushed a hand through Archer’s hair. The breeze was stronger now, whipping through it steadily, sending it into adorable cowlicks all over his head. Archer would probably be appalled but Bennet was charmed. Then again, he seemed always to be charmed by Archer. “I will kiss you and not kiss you whenever and wherever you like. If you don’t want to be kissed in town, I won’t kiss you in town. It is not a condition of my adoration of you that kissing must take place in public places. Kissing takes place where you would like me to kiss you. And I am hoping that is fairly frequently and in the most delightful, not-public places.”

 

“You can kiss me now,” said Archer, sounding a little breathless. “I’d very much like for you to kiss me now.”

 

Bennet tipped a smile Archer’s way and shifted his hand to cup Archer’s cheek as he leaned forward—

 

\--and then the boat pitched violently.

 

Archer said, “Fuck, let me deal with that,” and darted up to do something with the sail.

 

Bennet clutched the side of the boat and tried not to look as white-knuckled as he was. He tried to distract himself by looking around and actually enjoying the fact that he was, for the first time on his life, on a _boat_. In the middle of an impossibly beautiful bay with an impossibly beautiful man looking at an impossibly beautiful kingdom set out before him. And trying to distract himself worked, because it all _was_ impossibly beautiful. The bay sent up a spray of water every so often that was refreshing and, combined with the steadily increasing breeze, Bennet felt the most comfortable temperature he had been in Jadenvale so far. The seaside town they’d been walking through was spread out before him, and then beyond it rose the rest of the city, in steadily climbing cascades of pastel buildings. Archer’s boat was moving swiftly, and soon they would reach the cliff where the palace perched, and then beyond it, Bennet knew, the kingdom of Jadenvale continued, verdant hills and beachy shores and rocky inlets where tiny fishing villages clung and traded with the outside world in the way that Euphonia was so steadily dependent on. Queen Alexandra was so fixated on the no-man’s-land in the mountains when she had this beautiful seashore. Bennet would have loved for Euphonia to be so accessible to trade. Maybe, he thought, that was why his parents had been so fixated on The Lake.

 

The boat began to slow, Archer drawing the sail in and then making more adjustments, until their forward momentum had stopped and they were just gently rocking up and down on the motion of the waves underneath them. It was a curious sensation, not unpleasant, similar to being pulled in a coach.

 

Bennet shifted from his contemplation of Jadenvale to the other side, where the sea spread out to meet the horizon, sun dipping low toward it. The glacier that covered Euphonia was vast but Bennet had never felt so awestruck in the face of it. Maybe because he knew what was on the other side of the glacier, and it was more snowbound mountains of his kingdom.

 

Archer came to sit beside him, resting comfortably against him.

 

“How far out have you been?” Bennet asked, transfixed by the horizon.

 

“Not very far,” said Archer, sounding wistful. “It wasn’t considered safe.”

 

Bennet turned to look at him. He was gazing out at the horizon. “But you wanted to go?”

 

“I could see the ships from my room. I would watch them until they were so tiny that they disappeared. They would go out there, and they would come back with amazing things. Or they would never come back. And sometimes I thought…what would it be like to leave and never come back?” Archer took a deep breath. “I never liked being who I was.”

 

“I know,” said Bennet, because he did.

 

“I mean that I would have run, anywhere, if I could have. I wanted so badly to sneak onto a ship and follow the sun wherever it goes. To the bottom of the ocean, if that’s where it was. I never could make myself do it and I thought that was so…cowardly. I hated myself for that. I wouldn’t run away but I wouldn’t be happy here and I hated…” Archer turned his head to look at Bennet, his eyes wide and cast a rich shade of brown in the setting sun. “But then I wouldn’t have met you. If I’d run away, I wouldn’t have met you.”

 

“I think you’re very brave,” said Bennet, because he did. Archer was the brave one, launching himself into a completely unknown kingdom the complete opposite of everything he knew. And Bennet had been sulky today because he’d been expected to engage in a negotiation. It was fucking ridiculous of him.

 

“What is my sister doing to you?” Archer asked.

 

Bennet blinked, caught off-guard. “Your sister?”

 

“Come on,” Archer scoffed. “You are the least irresponsible royal I’ve ever met, besides her. You were supposed to negotiate today. Instead you begged me to smuggle you out of the palace. Why? What were you trying to avoid with her? What is she making you do?”

 

Bennet shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.”

 

“Of course it matters,” persisted Archer. “Things that matter to you matter to me. And, anyway, I’m pretty sure this thing that matters to you that is causing you problems actually _is_ me.”

 

“No,” said Bennet harshly, surprised by the immediacy of his reaction to hearing that said out loud. But this entire sojourn in Jadenvale had been full of red flag indications of how poorly Archer had been valued by this place and Bennet was starkly a foe of the place in Bennet’s brain that made him think poorly of himself. “You are not a problem. You are the farthest thing from being a problem for me.”

 

Archer looked dubious. “Bennet—”

 

All of these idiot people, Bennet thought furiously, who had made Archer’s most natural reaction to situations to be to assume that _he_ was the problem instead of _them_. Bennet had known Ava was right to chastise him for being anything other than completely behind Archer for the situation, because Archer did not deserve anything other than that from a person who claimed to love him, and Archer had received so little of that from people who claimed to love him. Bennet caught Archer’s face between his hands and said firmly, “You’re not a problem,” and kissed him hard, as if he could kiss every single thought out of Archer’s head, all the people who had made him ever feel undeservedly problematic for just the fact of his existence.

 

Archer made a small noise, plaintive to Bennet’s ears, and it made him want to gather him up and keep him safe forever. They would live on this sailboat for the rest of time, Bennet thought, and never go back to shore, and just stay here where Archer liked the sea and the sky and the lack of anything else. No wonder his parents had gone back again and again to The Lake. Was this what they had been looking for, a place to not be them?

 

Archer shifted to move onto Bennet’s lap while not pausing in the feverish pace of the kiss, which caused the boat to rock more energetically underneath them and caused Bennet to let go of his lapful of Archer and tug back abruptly from the kiss and cling to the boar instead, peering toward the ocean beyond them.

 

Archer said, sounding confused, “You okay?”

 

Bennet looked from the ocean, still reassuringly _outside_ of the boat, back to Archer, who had sat back and was regarding him with raised eyebrows. Bennet said, “You realize that I don’t know how to swim, right?”

 

Archer, after a moment, suddenly laughed. “Oh, of _course_. Neither does Ava. I didn’t even _think_ before— _Everyone_ knows how to swim in Jadenvale— _Sorry_ , have you been terrified this entire time?”

 

“No,” denied Bennet. “Of course not. I’m very brave.”

 

“You’re very brave,” Archer agreed, smiling as he settled himself more carefully on Bennet’s lap. “And I would never let you drown.” His eyes were dark and solemn as he looked down at Bennet.

 

“I know you wouldn’t,” Bennet said, aware they weren’t talking in the least about actual drowning.

 

“Let’s try this again,” suggested Archer, shifting to straddle Bennet. “Only I won’t rock the boat this time. Although, you do realize the boat can handle quite a lot of rocking before it would capsize, right?”

 

“We don’t need to test that hypothesis,” said Bennet.

 

Archer grinned, and then shifted to shove Bennet down on his back in the bottom of the boat. Bennet looked at the blue of the sky wheeling above his head, Archer in the middle of it, haloed by the backlight of the setting sun.

 

Archer said, “Can you see the ocean?”

 

“No,” Bennet said, because wasn’t that obvious?

 

“Good. Don’t think about the ocean. I’ll do all of the work and make sure you don’t think about the ocean.”

 

“Let’s not characterize what’s about to happen as ‘work,’ hmm?” said Bennet. “Work is what my subjects come to complain to me about.”

 

“Well,” said Archer, amusement thick in his voice as he moved down Bennet’s body, planting kisses here and there, tugging Bennet’s Euphonian clothing out of his way as he went. “When I’m your subject, I’ll add it to my list of things to complain to you about.”

 

“Oh,” said Bennet, “are you waiting until you’re officially my subject to complain to me? I hadn’t noticed that.”

 

Archer laughed, glancing up at Bennet from where he was hovering over Bennet’s groin. He looked so impossibly beautiful that Bennet couldn’t help but reach out and cup his hand around the curve of Archer’s jaw. Archer, caught momentarily into place, shifted slightly to take Bennet’s thumb into his mouth and suck, which made Bennet gasp.

 

Archer pulled off of Bennet’s thumb, moving away from Bennet’s touch, and said, his voice low and hoarse, “If any of your subjects come to talk to you about anything like _this_ …”

 

“None of my subjects ever talk to me about anything like this,” Bennet managed, “but you should feel free to skip the queue whenever you like to lodge complaints of this nature with me.”

 

“I’m not waiting in a fucking queue for you,” Archer muttered darkly to Bennet’s erection.

 

“I would never make you,” said Bennet, as Archer finally stopped teasing him and swallowed him down.

 

It was the sort of experience you could never have in Euphonia, thought Bennet, disjointed under Archer’s hands and mouth, skin exposed to the heat of the sun and the bite of the sea breeze, and despite Archer’s promise the boat rocked with Bennet’s aborted thrusts and impatient jerks of motion, but, in keeping with Archer’s promise, Bennet stopped caring about the ocean at all.

 

Archer, after, curled up on Bennet’s chest and Bennet dragged an uncoordinated hand through Archer’s hair and said, “Sailing is delightful. I’m quite taken with sailing.”

 

Archer laughed and kissed Bennet’s chest.

 

***

 

The sun was setting down behind the edge of the bay, in that place where Archer had always wanted to follow and never could.

 

Archer sat with his back up against Bennet’s chest, their legs tangled together, their hands intertwined, Bennet’s mouth lazy and aimless against whatever bit of Archer’s skin it felt like settling against.

 

“You’re missing the sunset,” Archer told him.

 

“Is it not nearly as spectacular as this little gathering of freckles right here on your shoulder,” said Bennet.

 

“Yes, it is,” said Archer. “It’s way more spectacular than _freckles_.”

 

“Do not speak of your freckles that way. They might get angry and run away.”

 

“That’s not how freckles work. Don’t pretend you know how freckles work. You’d never even _seen_ freckles until you met me.”

 

“Don’t mind him,” said Bennet. “He takes you for granted.”

 

“Are you _talking_ to my freckles now?”

 

“Don’t eavesdrop on private conversations,” answered Bennet primly, and mouthed at Archer’s shoulder.

 

Archer sighed and let Bennet be as ridiculous as he wanted to be. The sun was dipping lower and lower into the bay, and he knew they had to get back to shore. It would be dark before they knew it, and it wasn’t good to be out on the bay in the dark. It was easy to grow discombobulated and run up along the rocks.

 

But Archer didn’t feel like moving, didn’t feel like going by. If he’d thought Bennet would let him, he’d propose running away, letting the boat take them as far as it felt like taking them. But Bennet wouldn’t leave Euphonia, and Archer had no impression of making Bennet choose between Archer and his kingdom. Archer never wanted Bennet to have to regret being with Archer. Archer never wanted to be Bennet’s _problem_.

 

Archer said suddenly, “I want a seat at the table.”

 

“Hmm?” Bennet nosed behind Archer’s ear. “What table?”

 

“The negotiating table. For the wedding negotiations.”

 

Bennet stilled behind Archer, nose against Archer’s skin but unmoving now.

 

“It’s my wedding, too,” Archer continued. “It’s our wedding. We should both be there. I should be there. I shouldn’t be…I’m not going to be…kept out of having a voice in my own life. I’m so sick of…” Archer turned, clambering so he could see Bennet, which set the boat to rocking and Bennet’s face flashed briefly with panic as he reached out to steady himself. “Sorry,” Archer said, “I didn’t mean to—but I want to be—I don’t mean to make life difficult for you. If it makes it more difficult for you to have me there, it isn’t what I want. But at the same time, I have to be there. It’s unfair for me not to be. I hated how I was promised to Ava before I had a say. Why should I be letting this happen again?”

 

Bennet looked at him for a long moment. The sunset was starting to cast long shadows, obscuring Bennet’s blue eyes, so Archer couldn’t read them as well as he wanted to. But then Bennet said, “Yes. You should be there,” and so Archer didn’t need to have to read his eyes. Bennet sounded not the least bit troubled. “I should have suggested it far sooner. I’m sorry that I didn’t. But naturally you should be there. I suppose, if you don’t want to worry about it, you shouldn’t have to. But if you want to be there—”

 

Archer nodded swiftly. “I want to be there. I don’t want to hear any more of this secondhand. I want to know what’s on the table, I want to know what’s being discussed, I want to be able to protect you from what you’d give up.”

 

“Protect me?” said Bennet, laughter lurking in his voice.

 

“It’s not funny,” said Archer. “You need a lot of protection. You’re going to be a full-time job.”

 

“It’s just that I’ve been trying to protect _you_. You needn’t worry about me, I’m fine.”

 

“You’re not fine. This is weighing on you. Why should it weigh on you alone? It _shouldn’t_. Do you know what my point is? It’s to be there with you, so you don’t have to do things alone anymore. You’re not King by yourself, I’m going to help you.”

 

“That actually isn’t the ‘point’ of you, Archer. The ‘point’ of you is so much more than that. The ‘point’ of you is actually indescribable.”

 

“This is what makes these negotiations bad for you,” remarked Archer. “Because you actually _think_ that.”

 

“Because it’s _true_.”

 

“Never mind.” Archer shook his head. “You get to be completely insensible over me, and I’ll watch your back and make sure you don’t give your entire kingdom away for my sake. I’ll make sure Alex doesn’t _ask_ for your entire kingdom. I’m going to keep both of the idiot monarchs in my life in check.”  

 

“I am the only one in this relationship who is sensible about you, I’ll have you know,” said Bennet. “And I don’t want you at that negotiating table belittling your value.”

 

“Bennet,” Archer said, impatient and exasperated. “I love that you think I’m valuable but I would also love if you stop treating me like a particularly nice onyx and start treating me like a _person_.”

 

There was a long moment of silence, then Bennet deflated a little bit, sinking limply back against the boat behind him. “Fuck,” he said thickly. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I’m _sorry_. This whole fucking situation is—”

 

“Not your fault,” said Archer. “It’s not your fault. And I appreciate that you think you’re looking out for me, I really, really do. But I’d much rather look out for myself.”

 

Bennet looked up at him. He was now fully in shadow, the sun gone and inky blackness beginning to leak across the sky behind him, but his eyes were bright on Archer. “You know what? Wouldn’t you say that we have the same interest at this negotiating table, you and I? Wouldn’t you say that we both want to get married?”

 

“I hope so,” said Archer fervently.

 

“Good. Then let’s help each other look out for _us_. How’s that sound?”

 

“Yeah.” Archer nodded, relieved at the refocusing. They weren’t at war, any of them. They all wanted the same thing. They would _get_ there. “Yeah, let’s do that.”


	3. Chapter 3

The seaside town sparkled like jewels in a box as Archer sailed them back to the little pile of rocks. Bennet watched the lights come on up and down the coast, watched the palace steadily glow on its cliff, below which stood a tall building with a powerfully reflected flame. 

“What’s the building next to the palace?” Bennet asked, because he had never noticed it before and now that it was lit up it was undeniably attention-grabbing. 

“It’s a lighthouse,” Archer said. “To keep ships from running up against the cliff in the dark.” 

“This was a lovely excursion,” remarked Bennet, “but sailing is terrifying. You clearly have a much better sense of adventure than I do.” 

Archer chuckled, concentrating on something he was doing with the sail. “I think I just felt an ability for more opportunity. You were a king from a very early age. You didn’t have time to dream about adventure. Your life was spelled out. I was this uncertain little prince promised to some princess in some faraway land who might never want me. I think it was different for me. Can you throw that rope to Bertie?” 

Bertie was clearly the man on the rocks, who was waiting for them. Bennet took the rope and threw it very carefully, making sure he didn’t tumble over the side of the boat in the process. Luckily it was a good throw and Bertie caught the rope and secured the boat, and then stepped aside like he expected Bennet to be able to jump out of the boat, which was clearly not going to happen. 

Archer scrambled past Bennet and out of the boat and then turned to help him out. 

Bertie said, “I thought you were going to live out there.” 

“If only,” said Archer. 

“You’d have gotten bored eventually,” remarked Bertie. “Or hungry.” 

Archer smiled at him. “Thanks, Bertie.” 

“Don’t stay away so long next time, your Highness.” 

Archer gave Bertie a cheerful wave as they moved off. Bennet followed suit, even though it abruptly occurred to him that he wasn’t sure he had ever waved to anyone before in his life. It wasn’t something the King of Euphonia did, after all. 

Bennet had to concentrate very hard on the rocks in the growing darkness all around them, but when they reached the proper cobblestone path again, he said, “Doesn’t he know you’re going to Euphonia?” 

“We didn’t make a big thing about it,” Archer said. “There was never any announcement. And the negotiations aren’t done yet.” 

Bennet supposed that made sense. He said, “He had a point about being hungry. We’ll be late to dinner at the palace.” 

“We could eat in town,” Archer said. “We could keep being Archer and Bennet.” 

Bennet was about to decline the idea, he really was. He was about to go back to being responsible. Except for the fact that he suddenly remembered the restaurant they’d passed earlier. “Can we try the fried fish?” 

Archer smiled. “We can have the fried fish, yes.” 

The restaurant was crowded and the atmosphere was jovial. Bennet loved it instantly. It was open to the outdoors in a way that no building in Euphonia ever would be, but otherwise there was a vitality to it that Bennet recognized. This was regular life going on all around them, the same in either kingdom. 

And the fried fish was delicious. Hot and flaky and greasy and Bennet burnt his fingers wanting to eat it all immediately. 

“You’re supposed to let it cool down,” Archer said, laughing.

“But, Archer, it’s delicious like this,” Bennet said, around a mouth full of fish. “You are ruining it letting it sit on your plate like that. I am going to steal it from you in a few seconds.”

“No, you’re not,” Archer said, raising his hand to call over a serving person. “We’ll just get more. Can you get us another round?” he said to the man who hurried over. “He’s a glutton.” 

“I’m not a glutton,” Bennet protested, although the protest was undercut by the fact that he was still talking with his mouth full. 

Archer lifted a sarcastic eyebrow that was maddening enough to make Bennet want to tackle him to the ground and kiss the smugness out of him. But instead Bennet stole Archer’s fried fish to punish him. 

Archer ordered them more cocktails, these called starlights. They came in tiny glasses, not more than a few drops each, that glowed from within. 

“Is that actual starlight?” Bennet asked, bewitched, just as another platter of fried seafood was put down in front of him. There was too much everything, he thought, caught between the drink and the food. 

“No, it’s not actual starlight,” Archer said. “It’s made from jellyfish. They glow in the dark in the depths of the ocean. Or so I’m told.” 

“Jellyfish,” repeated Bennet. “Like what you put on toast? How many different types of fish are there?” 

“A lot,” said Archer. 

Bennet thought, about how much there was in Jadenvale. That coastline, he thought. It all came down again to that coastline. To that easy access to the rest of the world. Euphonia received such a tiny trickle of the things that were easiest to transport over the difficult mountain passes of the Graveyard. Meanwhile the people of Jadenvale were feasting like kings every night. 

Bennet took a contemplative sip of his starlight, and Archer immediately started swimming in from of his eyes. Bennet blinked until the two Archers merged back into one. 

“Careful,” Archer said. “If you’ve never had a starlight before, it can pack a punch.” Then Archer, still smiling, lifted his glass of starlight and knocked it back. 

“Fuck,” Bennet said thickly. “Did you just drink that all at once?”

“Practice,” said Archer. “It takes practice.” 

“Later tonight,” Bennet said, “I am going to make you less smug.” He took another careful sip of his starlight. The image of Archer basically turned completely upside-down before righting itself. “Fuck,” said Bennet. “What is this stuff?”

Archer laughed. “Eat a little more, take another sip, you’ll get past the first weirdness.”

Bennet only managed to take another sip because he trusted Archer. And finally, abruptly, he got starlight. It settled warmly in his stomach and then the warmth spread through his entire body. 

Bennet said, “Oh.” 

Archer said, “That’s starlight.”


	4. Chapter 4

“It’s like _floating_ ,” Bennet said.

 

“It is not at all like floating,” grumbled Archer. “I am practically carrying you. That’s why it feels like floating to you.” Archer dragged Bennet another few steps up toward the palace.

 

“Archer, wait, stop, I have to tell you something important.” Bennet tugged Archer to a stop.

 

“What?” Archer asked, when Bennet didn’t immediately say anything.

 

Bennet patted Archer’s shoulder heavily and said ardently, “I love you.”

 

Which went a long way to making Archer forgive him for this troublesome climb back up to the palace. Archer smiled at him. “Thanks.”

 

“Also, have you ever seen a two-headed frog?”

 

“What?”

 

“How many heads do you think a frog can have?”

 

“Why are we talking about frogs?”

 

“Good point. How many heads can _you_ have? You have about fifty heads.”

 

“I don’t have fifty heads. You drank way too much starlight.”

 

“A little too much, maybe.”

 

“Yeah, maybe,” said Archer, as he tried to resume their forward motion. It was his fault, he knew, because starlight was brutal until you got used to it, and he _knew_ that, but also Bennet had been so delighted by it, so tickled by the internal glow of it, and Archer had wanted to encourage that, wanted to finish their day off with Bennet wrapped in joy.

 

Which was, naturally, Alex’s cue to step forward out of the dark shadows ringed around the palace.

 

“And where have you two been?” she asked, crossing her arms and lifting her eyebrows, scolding.

 

Archer opened his mouth.

 

Bennet said, “Queen Alexandra,” and swayed a little bit on his feet. “You have starlight here.”

 

Alex stared at him.

 

Archer said, “Yeah. Starlight. Time for bed. In the morning—”

 

“You also have Archer here,” said Bennet.

 

“Bennet,” said Archer, thinking of the carefully official negotiations. “Let’s—”

 

“Starlight and Archer are basically my two favorite things,” said Bennet. “You have my two favorite things.”

 

Alex continued to look entirely bewildered.

 

“And you’re worried about the fucking no-man’s-land in the western mountains,” said Bennet. “Who gives a fuck? I don’t understand you. You have _Archer_. Do you see Archer here?” Bennet gave Archer a little shake.

 

“Bennet…” Archer said awkwardly, not knowing what else to do.

 

“You do see Archer, right?” Bennet asked suddenly. “I’m not hallucinating him, right? He’s here?”

 

“He’s there,” Alex agreed drily.

 

“He had a lot of starlight,” Archer said helplessly. “You know how that—”

 

“I am just saying that if I had had _Archer_ , I would never have just shipped him on a train to me sight unseen.”

 

“There was a treaty,” Alex said coldly. “Our countries had a treaty.”

 

“Fuck the fucking treaty,” said Bennet. “Fuck, _really_ , how are you so…how can you be so…how can we be so…You should have opened the fucking negotiations then. Don’t you see that you’ve played your hand this way and I know that it’s not Archer you see as having value, but rather me? Which is so fucked up, because I am the least valuable, and he is the most valuable—”

 

“Bennet,” Archer pleaded wildly. “ _Please_ let’s go—”

 

“No, I want to hear this,” Alex interrupted. “Are you saying you would have expected me to break the treaty we had? You wouldn’t have respected the treaty?”

 

“It was a treaty made decades ago when we were babies by irresponsible parents who went and abandoned us, so no, I wouldn’t have respected the fucking treaty blindly. I would have asked questions. I would have been a _person_.”

 

“You think I’m not a person?” Alex repeated, eyes wide.

 

“Okay,” Archer said, tugging at Bennet’s arm again. Why was he so fucking stubborn and _heavy_? “We really need to go, Bennet. Alex, let us go, he doesn’t know what he’s saying, he’s drunk on starlight, please let’s go, Bennet.”

 

Bennet looked at him vaguely, as if he was just seeing him for the first time, had just abruptly realized he was there. “Oh,” he said. “Archer. Did you want to go?”

 

“Inside. To bed,” said Archer. “ _Please_.”

 

“Yes. Of course. Let’s go.” Bennet turned and bowed low to Alex, actually managing not to fall over as he did it, which Archer was impressed by. Then he said, “Good night, um, insert proper form of address here. What’s the proper form of address?” he asked Archer.

 

“Her Majesty,” Archer whispered, tugging Bennet along frantically now that Bennet had started moving.

 

“Your Majesty!” Bennet shouted over his shoulder to where Alex was still standing in the courtyard staring at them.

 

Archer, as they entered the palace, glanced over his shoulder and muttered, “Fuck, fuck, fuck, how much did you just ruin the negotiations?”

 

“Ruin the negotiations?” echoed Bennet. “What do you mean? The negotiations are fine. They’re totally fine. I’ll give her the stupid no-man’s-land in the western mountains, if that’s what she wants. I don’t know what Jadenvale would even do with it anyway. You’ve got this land of bounty and plenty and you’re upset at a few farmers trying to get sheep to survive in a snowscape, like, what the fuck. I’m just going to give it to her because I’m tired of this and I want to get married and I want to get home, I can’t just leave my country indefinitely, what are you doing?”

 

“Getting you undressed,” Archer said, because now they were in Archer’s room and alone.

 

“Oh, are you?” said Bennet. “Promising. This seems promising.”

 

Archer barked out laughter. “You are in absolutely no state for this to be promising for me.”

 

“I’m offended,” said Bennet, and fell back onto the bed and immediately turned his head into the pillow.

 

“Bennet,” Archer said, looking down at him.

 

“Hmm,” said Bennet into the pillow.

 

“Thank you for thinking I’m the most valuable thing.”

 

Bennet opened one eye to look at Archer. “You are.” He reached out and caught Archer’s hand in his. “Silly prince.” He brought it to his mouth and gave it a sloppy approximation of a kiss.

 

“I’m going to fix the negotiations for us tomorrow.”

 

“The negotiations are fine,” Bennet said sleepily. “Don’t worry about the negotiations.”

 

Bennet started snoring and Archer sat up and watched him and brushed the shaggy black hair away from his face and thought of Bennet saying that he would have been a _person_. A person before a monarch, that was Bennet’s natural inclination, much as he tried to fight against it, and Alex was the opposite, and Alex would exploit that weakness.

 

And Archer wasn’t about to let her.


	5. Chapter 5

Archer didn’t go to their usual family breakfast. He didn’t know what Alex might want to say to him and he didn’t know how he would respond to that. He sat on the terrace outside his bedroom, letting the warm breeze flutter up from the bay and tease at the gauzy white curtains in front of his open doors, and half-watched Bennet sleep the dead of a starlight over-partaker and half-watched the ships on the bay, coming and going, the way he always had, the way he had always longed to follow.

 

He had always been told his destiny lay in the snow-covered hills of Euphonia but he’d never thought he’d actually _want_ to end up there. He wasn’t longing for being cooped up inside instead of sprawled on sun-drenched terraces, but he was, actually, totally okay as long as Bennet was also inside with him.

 

“You’re hiding,” remarked Alice, coming around the side of the terrace toward him. The terrace wrapped around the entire palace, it was accessible from all of the rooms on that floor.

 

“I am literally right here, out in the open, next to my bedroom,” Archer pointed out.

 

“You weren’t at breakfast, though. Alex was anxious for a word with you.”

 

“She could have found me very easily.” Alice dropped a newspaper in Archer’s lap, and Archer picked it up. “What’s this?”

 

Alice didn’t answer, picking herself up to perch on the broad balustrade along the terrace.

 

Archer glanced over the newspaper, and then said, “Ah. Oh. Huh.” Because the paper was full of sightings of him and Bennet. Which would have been unremarkable on its own, Archer supposed, except for the fact that Bennet had kissed him, and the newspaper was full of shock all of that. _With the apparent consent of the Only Prince!_ The newspaper exclaimed. _Who is this mystery man? Man!_

 

“Good job, Arch,” Alice said.

 

“I didn’t do that on purpose,” Archer said, sighing. “I didn’t think anyone really paid attention to me when I went into town.”

 

“You’re the Only Prince,” Alice said.

 

“That’s never been a big deal before.”

 

“It was always a big deal. You’ve always underestimated yourself. You’ve chronically underestimated yourself. What did Alex and I do to make you do that?”

 

“I don’t know,” said Archer. “It probably has something to do with how nobody ever listened to anything I wanted for the entirety of my life.”

 

Alice was silent for a second. “Do you feel that way? We didn’t mean to—”

 

“You’re doing it _now_ ,” said Archer flatly, and dropped the newspaper to the floor of the terrace. “I went out with my boyfriend. That’s what I did.”

 

“You’re a prince, and he’s a king. It’s not that simple, Archer.”

 

“It should be. I want you to fall in love with someone and then come back—”

 

“We’re royal, Arch. We’re not supposed to be falling in love.”

 

Archer looked at her. Then he said, “You’re right. I guess I can’t do anything properly, can I?”

 

“That isn’t what I meant,” Alice said helplessly. “Archer, I’m just saying that what you’re doing is making things _complicated_ , don’t you see? We’re all trying to—”

 

Archer shook his head sharply. “I just want to get Bennet, and I want to go home.”

 

There was a long moment of silence.

 

“Home?” Alice repeated.

 

Archer looked at her and said, “Yeah.” And then he stood up and went into his bedroom and was sure to close and lock the door behind him.


	6. Chapter 6

Bennet woke slowly, drifting upward from a deep black velvet in excruciating increments, becoming aware of little things, the feel of the sheet against his ankle, a strand of his hair that was resting across his forehead, the ever-present flowery scent in this place.

 

He finally stretched luxuriously and opened his eyes.

 

Archer was sitting by the large windowed doors that led out to the terrace. Bright sunlight was filtered through the curtains along the glass, casting Archer in a soft glow.

 

Archer smiled at him. “Hi.”

 

Bennet yawned enormously in response.

 

Archer looked openly amused, as he got up and crawled onto the bed with Bennet. “How do you feel?”

 

Bennet considered. “Fucking fantastic.”

 

Archer grinned, straddling Bennet as he turned onto his back to accommodate him. “That’s the starlight. You always sleep really well after a night of starlight.”

 

“Hmm,” remarked Bennet, looking up at Archer. “Starlight. Waking up to you. Something is responsible for my good mood.”

 

Archer leaned down to nip at Bennet’s lips. Then he said, “When do you have to meet my sister to negotiate?”

 

“I don’t know,” Bennet said negligently, pulling Archer down to try to tempt him into a more luxurious kiss. Bennet was feel languid and leisurely, and Archer felt like a ball of tightly coiled energy in contrast, and Bennet wanted to lure him into feeling as relaxed as Bennet did. Bennet suspected he had a path to that and it involved Archer wearing less clothing than he currently had on. “After breakfast,” he said, and by “breakfast” he really meant “Archer.”

 

Except Archer pulled back from him and said, “Yeah, I thought maybe that was it. You’re very late.”

 

Bennet blinked. “Very late? Why? What time is it?”

 

“It’s afternoon.”

 

Bennet sat up, languor abruptly dissipated. “Afternoon? _What_?”

 

Archer recovered from Bennet jostling him off and said, “Starlight. It makes you sleep like the dead. I did try to wake you. When I couldn’t, I sent a note to Alex on your behalf.”

 

“Saying what?” asked Bennet, wide-eyed.

 

“That you were indisposed. She knows you were drunk on starlight last night.”

 

“She does? How?”

 

“Yeah, I didn’t think you’d remember. We ran into her on the way back in.”

 

“Fuck,” said Bennet, tearing his hands through his hair. “Did I say anything?”

 

“Some things,” said Archer, in a tone of voice that made Bennet went to burrow back under the sheets.

 

“Oh, fuck,” groaned Bennet. “What did I say?”

 

“Soppy, starry-eyed things about how great I am.”

 

“Oh. Well, that’s okay. You _are_.”

 

“Then you said you wouldn’t have complied with the treaty for my marrying Ava until after you’d done some due diligence because you, unlike Alex, are a person.”

 

Bennet processed this. “I said that?”

 

Archer nodded.

 

“Well,” said Bennet. “It isn’t anything I haven’t thought. But still. How did she take it?”

 

“I don’t know. I haven’t seen her this morning. But you were drunk, Bennet. She knew you were drunk.”

 

“It’s going to be fine,” Bennet said, as he swung himself out of bed. And promptly fell to the floor when his legs just failed to work.

 

Archer looked over the edge of the mattress at him. “Yeah, that’s starlight. You need to move slowly after a night of starlight.”

 

Bennet scowled at him.

 

Archer said, “I went to your room and got you some clothes,” and rolled out of bed and retrieved the clothing and carried it over to Bennet.

 

“Thank you,” said Bennet, and tried to have dignity as he slowly forced his muscles to start working, forced clothes onto himself.

 

“Bennet,” said Archer, still sitting on the bed and watching him. “What we talked about yesterday. I want to come to the negotiations with you.”

 

“Yes,” Bennet agreed. “I assumed you were going to. Did you not tell your sister that last night?”

 

“It didn’t seem like the right time. I was busy trying to keep you from falling over.”

 

Bennet shook his head as he pulled his boots on. “No more starlight. My head feels all fuzzy like I’m still sleeping. I don’t like it at all.”

 

“You drank _a lot_ of it.”

 

“You should have warned me.”

 

“You were happy,” said Archer. “I like to see you happy.”

 

Bennet would have stood but he wasn’t sure yet of the resiliency of his leg muscles. So instead he crawled over to the bed and leaned up toward Archer and said, “That’s not the starlight. Starlight isn’t what I need to make me happy.”

 

Archer leaned down and gave him the kiss he’d been looking for. And then said, “You said starlight and I were your two favorite things.”

 

“I said that last night?”

 

“You said that last night.”

 

“Well,” said Bennet. “That was before I had all the facts about starlight.”

 

“How are you still wearing those hideously hot boots everywhere?” asked Archer, abruptly changing the subject.

 

Bennet looked at them. “What’s wrong with my boots?”

 

“Aren’t you hot in them?”

 

“They’re proper Euphonian boots,” said Bennet staunchly. “I don’t want my feet undefended.”

 

“Undefended? Undefended from what?”

 

“Ava told me you have lots of snakes and lizards here.”

 

Archer’s lips twitched. “Not in the _palace_.”

 

Bennet looked at Archer warily. “She said one bit her little toe.”

 

Archer started laughing, rolling around on the mattress.

 

“Not funny,” said Bennet, and pulled himself up to standing gingerly. Then he looked back down at his boots. “Anyway, I don’t have my cloak and I don’t have my crown, at least let me a look a bit of the Euphonian royal part and keep the properly shined boots.”

 

Archer, after a long moment, said, “Yeah,” and leaned up and kissed Bennet again.


	7. Chapter 7

Bennet’s statement about the proper clothing made Archer realize that he hadn’t given much thought to the strict and official propriety of the negotiations. He had dressed in a well-cut Jadenvalian suit of a light, pale fabric, with a rich blue tie that reminded him both of the bay outside the window and of Bennet’s pale eyes. But, reminded by Bennet’s statement, he paused and put his diadem atop his head.

 

And actually felt oddly better. Not that he needed to feel more like a prince to show up at the negotiations, because it wasn’t really as prince that he was going to them, but that he felt like his parents were there with him, in some weird way. His parents who had married him off as a baby. He suddenly thought that maybe his parents would have reconsidered that, or at least have handled everything differently and kept their children socializing with Bennet and Ava throughout their childhoods, so it wouldn’t have been such a shock to Archer’s system. And Archer didn’t remember his parents very much at all but he liked to think that they would have wanted him to be _happy_.

 

He wished, so desperately, that they were there so he could ask them. He wished he could remember them looking at him lovingly so that he could be sure of their support. He wished for so many things, but what was in his grasp, most of all, was Bennet, and that he was going to get.

 

“You look lovely,” Bennet said, standing by the door watching him. “You didn’t need to worry about that. But you do.”

 

“I want to look the part,” said Archer. “If I wasn’t a prince, we wouldn’t have to be having these negotiations. We could just get married.”

 

Bennet looked rueful as he stepped aside to let Archer precede him through the door. “I hate to break it to you but if I were still a king, we’d still have to be having negotiations.”

 

“But what would you even negotiate for?” Archer asked as they walked down the hallway together. “If I was a normal person?”

 

“You _are_ a normal person.”

 

“You know what I mean.”

 

“Things like ‘If it doesn’t work out, you’ll live in one particular palace and not bother me.’”

 

Archer wrinkled his nose. “Have you been negotiating with Alex for what should happen if it doesn’t work out between us?”

 

“No,” said Bennet. “If it doesn’t work out, I’d assumed you’d want to return here, so there would be little point to negotiating Euphonian palaces.”

 

“Probably true,” allowed Archer. “We didn’t really discuss a strategy.”

 

They had reached the closed double doors of the state room. Two armed guards on either side of the door stood at attention.

 

Bennet put a hand on the doorknob but didn’t open the door. He said, “Archer, you should have a seat at this negotiating table because you should have a say in your life. So we don’t have a strategy, because I don’t want you to worry about me or Euphonia in there. You worry about you. You make sure you get what you need to make you happy. Agreed?”

 

There was no way in hell Archer wasn’t going to worry about Bennet and Euphonia in there but if Bennet wanted to believe that, then Archer would let him. “Agreed,” said Archer. “Open the door already, you’re building all sorts of unnecessary suspense.”

 

Bennet smiled faintly, and then he suddenly laughed full-fledged.

 

Archer looked at him in surprise. “What?”

 

“Nothing,” said Bennet, his blue eyes impossibly warm, the opposite of icy. Then he ducked down and pressed a haphazard kiss to Archer’s temple, and Archer didn’t want to admit it but it was a nice last-minute gesture before walking in to do battle. “Let’s go,” said Bennet, and pushed open the door.

 

Archer had expected there to be courtiers in the room but Archer was unprepared for how _many_ there were. The state room was built to be impressive, and Alex was taking full advantage. A polished white stone table ran down the length of the room, in front of the endless pairs of windows doors leading out onto the terrace and framing a breathtaking view of the bay, and Alex sat at the head of the table, on a bright gold throne, with her diamonds gleaming in her rich copper hair. Lining the table on either side of her was a retinue of attendants, quills poised over pieces of paper, or maps of the two kingdoms unfurled in front of them. They all looked expectantly at Bennet and Archer as they entered.

 

Archer wanted to ask if they’d all just been sitting there all day, waiting for Bennet’s arrival. He wondered if they’d all just sat there the day before, too. He did _not_ wonder why Bennet had been exhausted and desperate yesterday. If Bennet had really been sitting all day, every day, just him against this entire room full of unfriendly people…yeah, Archer didn’t wonder about that _at all_.

 

Alex said, “Excellence. Are we quite ready to resume the negotiations? Have enough protocols been broken for your liking?” Her eyes slid to Archer. “Then again, evidently not.”

 

“Your Majesty,” said Bennet graciously. “His Highness the Only Prince—”

 

“Is speaking for himself,” inserted Archer, because these fucking monarchs and their fucking protocols, they’d talk circles around each other indefinitely.

 

Alex lifted an eyebrow at him. “Your Highness—”

 

“Alex,” Archer interrupted her smoothly, and felt a ripple of startlement in the air from all of the attendants. “Clear the room.”

 

There was a very long moment of silence, during which Alex looked across at him and Archer held her gaze steadily, steadfastly, refusing to back down.

 

Then Alex clipped out, “Leave us.”

 

All of the attendants gathered their belongings and filed out one by one, not saying a word, but Archer was aware plenty of words would be said as soon as they got outside of the room. It was probably going to be all over Jadenvale that the Only Prince, who’d been willingly kissing a man in public the day before, had ordered his sister the Queen to clear a room.

 

When the door closed behind the last attendant, Alex said coldly, “Archer, what do you think this is?”

 

“It’s a negotiation over my future,” Archer said staunchly. “Which means I should be in the room. It’s an entire conversation all about _me_ , and no one’s even bothered to consult me about it.”

 

“It’s not how these things go,” Alex said. “It’s a breach of protocol. And haven’t you two breached enough protocol already?”

 

“So what’s a little more?” said Archer. “I breached protocol in the first place bringing you a king instead of a princess. So it turns out good things tend to happen when I breach protocol, wouldn’t you agree?”

 

Alex’s eyes shifted from Archer to Bennet. “You want him to have a seat at the table?”

 

“I think he should have from the very beginning,” said Bennet. “I think it’s odd that we insist on behaving as if he isn’t a person who ought to be consulted about what happens with his life, or in his name.”

 

“Oh, yes,” remarked Alex. “You are so very enamored of the idea of being _people_ , are you not?”

 

Bennet opened and closed his mouth, and Archer knew he was uncertain of his footing because he couldn’t remember exactly what he’d told Alex the night before.

 

Archer said, “He isn’t wrong. We _are_ people.”

 

“We are countries.”

 

“We can be both,” Bennet said, even and firm. “I think we can be both.”

 

“Indeed. And would you be so in favor of this plan of allowing Archer a seat at the table if you weren’t so sure that Archer would take your side in the negotiations?”

 

“That isn’t why I’m here,” said Archer.

 

“If it makes you uncomfortable, Your Majesty,” said Bennet politely, “I am willing to absent myself from the table in order to allow His Highness to negotiate without undue—”

 

“Sit down,” Archer commanded flatly.

 

Bennet, after a second, obeyed, pulling out the seat at the foot of the table.

 

“I think—” began Alex.

 

“Stop talking,” Archer said to her.

 

She blinked in astonishment, falling automatically quiet.

 

“Good,” said Archer, and pulled out his own seat at the middle of the table. “Now. Here are my terms.”


	8. Chapter 8

Princess Ava of Euphonia, if you asked her brother, had always been convinced that there was almost nothing in the world she couldn’t do, brilliantly, if she just put her mind to it. There wasn’t really anyone around anymore who remembered Ava before the age of five, as Bennet was fuzzy on memories of her as a toddler and palace turnover had been great in those early turbulent years of Bennet’s regency, so they could only assume that she had been a daredevil in learning to walk. Bennet knew for a fact that she had been a daredevil in all things after that. Ava had constantly chafed at the boundaries of palace life, was adept at sneaking past guards, at scaling palace walls, at drinking sailors under the table if she had to. 

There was nothing Ava of Euphonia couldn’t do. 

Although at the moment Ava of Euphonia was curled in a ball on one of the Jadenvale palace’s gracious terraces, trying to will the baby inside of her to stop doing somersaults. She’d felt poorly all morning and even now had ventured outside only because her body, so starved of warm sun her entire life, seemed suddenly to crave it. Ava wondered if the baby’s father had had Jadenvalian blood that caused the baby to demand the heat so much. Or maybe Ava herself had some: surely somewhere in the distant past the royal lines had merged together before. 

At any rate, Ava was curled up on herself, feeling cold with terror at the idea of the baby, of the possibility of coming up against the one thing Ava of Euphonia could not do. 

“What is your brother like as a king?” asked Princess Alice without preamble, as she came onto the terrace where Ava was. 

Ava, torn away from her own self-pitying thoughts, considered the question, and then finally decided she didn’t know how to answer until she knew what the purpose of the question was. So she said, very intelligently, “What?” 

“I think Alex thinks he’s flighty and irresponsible,” said Alice, plopping onto the chair next to Ava. 

Ava couldn’t help the laughter that bubbled up inside of her. “Bennet? No. Not at all. That is the opposite of Bennet. He’s very careful and thoughtful as a king. It takes him forever to make a decision because he likes to hear all of the angles.” 

“And yet he’s here, recklessly, by himself, with no advisors, single-handedly negotiating a wedding treaty with my brother.” 

“Because he’s in love with him,” Ava said, bewildered that Alice seemed confused by this. “I don’t understand you lot. Haven’t any of you ever been in love? Bennet wants Archer. What is difficult to understand about that?” 

Alice, after a moment, dropped Ava’s gaze, turning to look out over the bay. “We don’t get out much,” she said. “It wasn’t encouraged.”

Ava snorted. “Fuck encouragement. Didn’t any of you want to run away?” 

“Yeah.” Alice gave a sad sort of smile. “Archer did.” 

Ava considered that. “Maybe that’s how it feels, for us younger kids. Maybe you older ones had purpose, had a memory of parents instilling you with a feeling of destiny and responsibility. Maybe we grew up feeling lost and just wanted to run away to find ourselves.” 

There was a long moment of silence. Then Alice said thoughtfully, “I feel like that’s what Archer did. He went away and found himself. He’s been different since he’s been back. He’s always been a little difficult to read, more inclined to be sulky than to tell us what he wants, but I feel like he’s been more willing to just say it: what he wants, how he feels. And I guess we’ve been so used to him not telling us anything that we’re having a difficult time hearing him now.” 

“I think it’s possible he didn’t know what he wanted to be able to tell you, until now. Will your sister listen?”

“I don’t know. I think so. I hope so. I feel like it’s taking us a little while to realize exactly how seriously Archer feels about Bennet. He has never been like this before, and to us it seems to have happened so quickly. We have always had a protective instinct when it comes to Archer. He’s the baby, after all. We have never wanted to just let him…” Alice looked at Ava again. “Is your brother good about listening to you?” 

Ava chuckled. “Not especially. But I think he’s getting better. I sense I may have always been better at yelling at him than Archer has been at yelling at your sister.” 

Alice pulled her knees up into her chest, wrapped her arms around them, rested her chin on the top of them. “Can I ask…was he very upset…about the baby?” 

“He was. Until he wasn’t. I think he was mostly worried what people would say about me. As if I gave a fuck about that. Now I think he thinks everything’s been settled very nicely. No more to worry about.”

“That’s not true?” asked Alice, clearly catching the doubt in Ava’s tone. 

Ava looked over at Alice. “Do you know anything about babies?” 

“No,” Alice admitted. 

“Me, too. So you can understand that I think there’s an enormous amount to be worrying about.” 

“He’ll help you,” Alice said. “He seems like a brother who cares about you.” 

“He loves me very much. He’s also a king with a kingdom to rule. He hasn’t time to play nursemaid for me. And it wouldn’t be fair to make him. This is my mess. I mean, not a mess.” Ava put a conciliatory hand on the blossoming swell of her stomach, to try to soothe the baby out of throwing a tantrum over being called a mess. She had a headstrong baby in there who would definitely take offense at such a characterization. “But, you know. My situation.” Ava took a deep breath and looked at Alice and said honestly, “And he’s happy right now, Bennet. I’ve never seen him so happy. He deserves that. I’ve made him fret and worry my entire life. I want to let him have at least a honeymoon before I make him fret and worry again.” 

“You’re very sweet to him,” Alice said. 

“I’m not,” Ava said. “I’m really not. It’s just…that it’s us against the world. Isn’t that how you and Archer and Alexandra feel, underneath it all? Who else do any of us have but each other in this madness?”


	9. Chapter 9

Archer sat at the table, the sunlight almost dizzying as it reflected off the highly polished white stone, and said, “The no-man’s-land in the western mountains.”

 

“King David has agreed to vacate—” began Alex.

 

“No, he’s not,” said Archer.

 

“Archer—” said Bennet.

 

“No, you’re not,” Archer said swiftly, looking at him, and then looked back to Alex. “I’ve been to Euphonia. You haven’t. There isn’t a lot of grazeable land there. We have an abundance of grazeable land. And you’re worried about a tiny strip in the mountains?”

 

There was a pause. Alex said, “It starts with a tiny strip, and then it—”

 

“We’re allies,” Archer said. “We are literally uniting the two kingdoms.”

 

“The treaty was brokered in all the best wisdom—”

 

“Before any of our collective memories. The world changes. Things change. Euphonians will be allowed to keep a certain number of sheep and other livestock in the no-man’s-land, and to tend to them as necessary. No permanent structures will be built, lest people start panicking for fuck knows what reason, but I’m not fucking the Euphonian people over because their king went and fell in love with me. If Bennet wasn’t here right now, the no-man’s-land wouldn’t be up for negotiation. It’s off the table.”

 

Alex frowned. “Archer—”

 

“The lands that belong to me, along the southern sea.”

 

“Those are your—”

 

“I want to trade them, for an equal amount bordering The End. Those will be my estates.”

 

“Archer,” Alex said, “your lands are prime farmland. The returns on your rents—”

 

“If I’m going to be Prince Consort of Euphonia, I can’t do it without being all in on Euphonia. As a gesture of commitment to the Euphonian people, I’m going to move my estate to the border.”

 

“Archer,” said Bennet quietly. “You really don’t have to—”

 

Archer ignored him. “Those are the terms of the marriage. He keeps the access to the no-man’s-land in the western mountains that he’s already gained, as well as my estate along The End.”

 

“And what will I tell the people in Jadenvale they are getting in response to giving up their prince and a great deal of their land to Euphonia?”

 

“You’ve just regained my estate along the southern sea. Prime farmland. It’s up to you what you do with it but I expect the people of Jadenvale would rejoice to receive it as a gift in celebration of the Only Prince’s wedding.”

 

“And what if it doesn’t work out?” asked Alex crisply. “This sudden headstrong delusion you have that the two of you are going to reign forever cozy in your mountain kingdom?”

 

It broke over Archer like a slap to the face, what this was all about. Alex wasn’t negotiating on behalf of Jadenvale. Alex wasn’t this obsessed with the no-man’s-land in the western mountains. Alex thought if she drew this out, Archer or Bennet would lose interest, and that would be the end of this situation. Archer was surprised at the initial hot flare of his anger, but then it settled into a glowing bank of furious determination spreading through him. “I’m not being _delusional_ , Alex,” Archer retorted. “I’m not being _headstrong_. You sent me to Euphonia, you wanted me gone, and now you’re—”

 

“I never wanted you gone, Arch,” Alex protested. “There was a treaty.”

 

Archer stood, scraping his chair back, practically trembling with the force of his energetic stubbornness falling into line. If Alex thought that delay was going to change his mind about all of this, Alex was _dead wrong_ , and she had to be made to see that. “And this is the new treaty. You’re going to draw up the terms of this new treaty. You’re going to request that the people of Jadenvale rejoice at this new union. And then we’ll throw a royal wedding and you can invite all of the other royal families out there and everyone can ooh and aah at your gorgeous palace.”

 

“And what if I think that this is nowhere near your worth, Archer? That you are selling yourself short? That this would be a mistake?”

 

And Archer, who was so angry he was shaking with, also suddenly wanted to cry. Because, in this odd complicated convoluted relationship he had with this sister, he realized that she was trying to protect him while simultaneously knowing almost nothing about him. “It’s not,” Archer said, relieved when his voice came out even and steady. “I’m not selling myself short. He makes me happy. I wish you would trust me to know that. I wish you would trust me to know what I want for the rest of my life. I want him.” Archer looked at Bennet, who looked startled, and momentarily Archer couldn’t understand why Bennet would look startled, and then he thought of Bennet’s constant anxious questions about what Archer would miss, what Archer should bring with him. _Bennet_ , Archer realized, didn’t even understand the depth to which Archer wanted him.

 

So Archer spoke to Bennet, earnestly and fervently. “And I want that absolutely insane little development clinging to the edge of a stretch of land so desolate they call it that _Graveyard_ , and I want those crazy people who think living life _there_ is a good idea. I want Euphonia, the way the snow tastes in the air, the way the sky is so sharp it hurts to look at it. I want to get better at racing along glaciers, I want to learn how to get along with mountain yaks, I want to understand exactly how to set a fire. That’s what I want. And I don’t know if the Euphonian people will ever accept me, ever forgive me for stealing their king from them and casting the succession into a little bit of chaos, but at least I can offer them their stake in the no-man’s-land and a few straggly fields along the edge of The End, to do with as they wish. And I figure it’s a start.”

 

Bennet looked stunned, blue eyes wide. “ _Archer_ ,” he breathed.

 

“So that’s how I feel,” Archer said, feeling awkward now that the rush of his anger had subsided. “That’s how I feel and that’s what I want and I don’t want to worry anymore about the two of you working it out. I’m going to Euphonia, one way or the other. I do it with a blessing and a royal wedding behind me, or I do it in Jadenvalian disgrace, but I don’t give a fuck one way or the other, as long as it happens.”

 

Archer didn’t wait for a reaction. He didn’t know what else there was to say, and he didn’t want to have to come up with more eloquence. He wasn’t sure he had more eloquence in him. So instead he pushed his way through the door, out into the hallway.

 

The small army of attendants who had been milling about, gossiping in furious whispers, fell immediately silent upon seeing him. And Archer was sure he looked a state—he could feel that his diadem had tipped in the fervor of his entreaties—but he forced himself to hold his head high, and when he moved the attendants scurried out of his way, clearing a path for him.

 

“Archer!” Bennet shouted for him, which slowed Archer’s forward momentum.

 

Embarrassed and confused, he turned back to Bennet, who was sweeping his way through the curious attendants. “What are you doing?” he said. “Go back in there and—”

 

“It is very vitally important that I do this first before conducting my serious state business,” said Bennet gravely, and then without warning pushed Archer up against the nearest wall with the force of the kiss he gave him.

 

Archer made a muffled sound into Bennet’s mouth before kissing him back, too dazed to do anything else. When Bennet finally stopped kissing him and thought flooded back into Archer’s brain, Archer realized that he was pressed into the wall by the full weight of Bennet’s body against him and that every wide-eyed attendant watching them was going to report quite the show and Archer totally didn’t blame them.

 

“Archer,” Bennet said, smiling softly, cupping Archer’s face in his hands. “You lovely prince. Wonderful prince.” Bennet dotted kisses all over Archer’s face.

 

“What is happening?” Archer asked, bewildered, even as he turned his face this way and that to catch Bennet’s kisses. “Is this the starlight talking? Are you still drunk?”

 

Bennet laughed, that full-throated delighted laugh that made Archer’s toes curl with pleasure to have provoked. He pressed their foreheads together, nose resting beside Archer’s nose, lips brushing at Archer’s cheek. And he murmured, “All this time, when you said that you loved me, I didn’t realize that you loved _me_.”

 

Archer felt as if everything inside of him melted, so it was a good thing Bennet’s body was holding him upright against the wall. He tangled his fingers through the shaggy hair on the back of Bennet’s neck and said, because he knew Bennet needed to hear it, “I meant it. I meant everything. I want you as you, and I want you as Euphonia, I want your whole package. You are both person and country and I love all of it, every part of you, _both_ of you.”

 

Bennet took a couple of deep shaky breaths. And then he pressed a kiss to the shell of Archer’s ear and whispered into it, “I am going to fuck you tonight until you feel like you’ve been drowned in starlight.”

 

Archer couldn’t help his body’s shiver of reaction. He said, without any hint of authority at all, “Stop being a filthy person and go be a responsible monarch.”

 

Bennet was grinning when he kissed Archer. It wasn’t one of his more effective kisses, but Archer was quite alright with that.


	10. Chapter 10

Bennet was trying to be very composed and serious. Queen Alexandra was dictating the terms to the wedding treaty and Bennet really needed to be paying attention to this, to be watching the scribe as they wrote it all down furiously.

 

But mostly Bennet was thinking of Archer, diadem tipped crooked in his thicket of dark hair, talking of Euphonia as if he loved it, as if living there was a choice he wanted to make.

 

It occurred to Bennet, as he stood listening to Queen Alexandra while not at all listening to Queen Alexandra, that, despite his steadfast affection for his country, he had also somehow always assumed that no one would choose Euphonia if they could have Jadenvale instead. He was suddenly aware that it was built into the character of the kingdom, this defensive mistrust of outsiders, this wariness of being mocked or belittled. It had, Bennet thought, been the root of Archer’s inability to find a caravan to bring him across the Graveyard when he had first arrived in the region. The Euphonian people were warm and gracious and generous but they were suspicious of outsiders because they had never been confident of their place.

 

It was silly, Bennet thought. It was so silly. It was without basis. Maybe some people would _prefer_ Euphonia.

 

Queen Alexandra said, “Would you like to review the treaty, Excellence?”

 

Bennet blinked himself back into the present moment, as a scribe helpfully turned the treaty Bennet’s way so he could see it.

 

Bennet pulled it over and read his way through it. It was fairly simple and straightforward, Archer’s terms encased in ink. Bennet spent longer than was necessary looking at the calligraphy of his name and coat of arms intertwined with Archer’s name and coat of arms. It was a crude working, unrehearsed, and they would get better at it, but Bennet thought of how many proclamations would go out from this point on would go out from his palace under a joint coat of arms, and it was foolish to get emotional over it, but Bennet couldn’t help it. He _was_.

 

When he had been twelve years old, an old herald of his father’s had walked into his bedroom in the middle of the night and said, “Your parents are missing, presumed dead.” And then had bowed low, the first time anyone had ever done that to Bennet, and said, “Begging your pardon, Excellence.”

 

And Bennet, a child, had sat in his bed, astounded, dumbfounded, terrified, stricken, swamped with sorrow, and had grown up in an instant, alone, surrounded by people he couldn’t afford to trust, weighed down with worry over the burden of Ava, so full of individual vivacity in a way that had seemed so foreign to Bennet, who could barely remember anymore the life when he had a life that was his own.

 

Bennet had been alone, for a very long time, sitting on a throne and issuing proclamations, with no one who touched him or looked him in the eye for too long or called him by his name. And now there was an “A” intertwined with his “D,” a Jadenvalian anchor linked to his Euphonian stars, and this was all official state business and he was linking his country and he knew he shouldn’t be emotional. But he wanted to take this new coat of arms and stamp it into his skin forever. He wanted to ask the scribe to draw it on his hand, so he could show it to Archer later.

 

Bennet, aware of how many eyes were on him, marshaled his wits, looked at the paper, at the space for his signature next to Queen Alexandra’s. Not just a wedding, Bennet thought, but a treaty.

 

“It looks to be in order,” he said, “but I must bring it to Euphonia to be approved by the council.”

 

There was a moment of silence.

 

Queen Alexandra said, “You must what?”

 

“It’s an acquisition of land and formal rights on behalf of the country, it must be approved by the kingdom’s council. You understand.” Bennet gestured to the crowd of Queen Alexandra’s advisors all around them.

 

“Why did you not bring this council with you?” Queen Alexandra asked, sounding annoyed. “I was under the impression you were individually empowered.”

 

“I shouldn’t have left that impression,” Bennet said, even though he knew he probably had. But things had been quick to progress, and Archer liked so much to be free of royal trappings, Bennet hadn’t wanted to overrun the palace with his own army of attendants demanding their own versions of proper protocol. “If you would have one of your scribes make a copy, I’ll take it with me back to Euphonia immediately.”

 

“And what is my brother going to say of this particular delay?” asked Queen Alexandra drily.

 

“That is the business of Euphonia and its Prince Consort,” Bennet replied.


	11. Chapter 11

Archer felt dazed and shaky in the wake of delivering his ultimatum to Alex. Part of him thought he ought to sleep—he hadn’t really slept the night before—but another part of him knew he was far too jittery to sleep, so instead he changed into a bathing suit and went for a swim. He swam laps until his mind was too tired to think anymore, until he could barely pull himself through the water. And then he dragged himself onto the warm stone by the side of the pool and sprawled there, catching his breath, letting the sun warm him.

 

A lizard scurried by, paused to regard Archer curiously, then decided he was nothing interesting and scurried on. Archer thought of Bennet worrying about his toes being bitten and actually laughed out loud, at nothing. It would have been embarrassing if anyone had been around to hear it, but there was just the trickle of the water in the swimming pool and the buzzing of insects in the air.

 

Archer’s eyes drooped, and he slept, and then woke to someone shaking him awake.

 

“Sorry, sir,” said the person, “but the sun is setting and it’s growing cold, and you’re freckled like crazy. How long have you been sleeping out here?”

 

Archer opened his eyes and blinked uncomprehendingly at Trix, crouched next to him. And then he said, “ _Trix_ ,” and sat up and pulled her into a hug.

 

Trix hugged back awkwardly, which Archer didn’t blame her for, because Archer wasn’t usually big on hugs, but he was desperately happy to see a familiar face, someone who had literally been with him through Euphonia and back again.

 

“How’s your mom?” Archer asked.

 

“Never mind my mom. How are _you_? What was that hug all about? You said you were going to be fine without me.”

 

“I was fine. I’m absolutely fine.”

 

Trix looked dubious.

 

“I’m marrying Bennet,” Archer said. “I had to negotiate my own wedding treaty because Alex and Bennet were both being idiots. Pretty boring few days, really.”

 

Trix’s mouth dropped open. “ _You_ negotiated the wedding treaty?”

 

“It’s my wedding, isn’t it?”

 

“How’d you do that?”

 

“Oh, it was glorious,” came Bennet’s voice, from the palace doorway. “You should have seen him. He was practically on fire. He was incandescent. Like a glass of starlight.” Bennet’s silhouette wandered from the bright back-lit doorway out toward the swimming pool, cast in navy blue by the twilight. “Hello, Trix,” he said, smiling at her warmly.

 

“Hello, sir,” she said. “How was sailing? I read all about it in the newspaper.”

 

“Cheeky,” said Bennet. “That will never do. I must ask my Prince Consort to find a head of security with more Euphonian manners.”

 

“Fuck you,” said Archer cheerfully.

 

Bennet shook his head, mock-exasperated. “Really, the pair of you are exhausting. How’s your mother, Trix?”

 

“Good, sir. She may have cursed me on my way out the door. Me, or some goats. It remains to be seen.”

 

Bennet’s eyebrows had lifted toward his hairline. “And how will we tell?”

 

“If the goat’s hooves turn purple. Or if my hands turns purple.”

 

“You make me think that I wouldn’t want your mother to visit Euphonia,” remarked Bennet.

 

“Her mother’s harmless,” said Archer. “Trix exaggerates.”

 

“We disagree on this,” Trix told Bennet.

 

Bennet smiled absently. “I sense this disagreement will not be resolved tonight. So, in the meantime, could I have a moment with the prince?”

 

“Of course, sir. Absolutely.” Trix glanced back at Archer. “I’ll be around now.”

 

Archer nodded. “Welcome back.”

 

Trix gave him a little salute, heading into the palace, glowing with light from within.

 

“Hi,” Archer said to Bennet. He was grinning. He couldn’t help it.

 

“Hi,” said Bennet, answering his grin, slipping his arms around Archer’s waist. He was holding a piece of paper in one of his hands, but it didn’t stop him from splaying the other one low on Archer’s back.

 

“I seem to recall some promise about fucking and starlight,” said Archer.

 

Bennet chuckled. “Yes. In a minute.”

 

“Already going back on your promises,” remarked Archer. “I should take back the wedding treaty.”

 

“Speaking of.” Bennet pecked a kiss onto Archer’s lips, then stepped back and flourished the piece of paper of Archer. “I wanted you to see this.”

 

“Is that the treaty?”

 

Bennet nodded.

 

Archer took it and read through it. “It looks right.”

 

“I think so, too. Can I point something out?” Bennet’s finger tapped at the top of the paper.

 

Archer hadn’t even looked at the coat of arms at the top. He’d assumed it was Bennet’s. But now that he looked he realized it wasn’t entirely Bennet’s.

 

Archer inhaled sharply, and then traced a wondering finger over the joint coat of arms. It hadn’t even _occurred_ to him…

 

“Do you like it?” asked Bennet.

 

“Yeah,” breathed Archer, and looked up at Bennet. “Do you?”

 

But the answer was obvious on Bennet’s face. Which was why the last thing Archer expected him to say was, “I have to go back to Euphonia.”

 

Archer shook his head as if cold water had been poured out on him. “What?”

 

“I have to take the treaty back, have the council approve it, before I can sign.”

 

“Oh.” Archer supposed that made sense. “When?”

 

“Tomorrow. I want to be there and back as soon as possible.”

 

“I’ll go with you.”

 

Bennet shook his head. “I’d rather you didn’t. I don’t want the council to…think I was pressured.”

 

“Pressured?”

 

“By your incredibly seductive body, of course. Your alluring good looks.”

 

“Stop it,” said Archer.

 

“I won’t stop it. It would be an inevitable conclusion they would draw. How could I resist you? They would worry their king has been ensorcelled—”

 

“You’re ridiculous,” said Archer, kissing Bennet to shut him up.

 

Bennet smiled into the kiss, then pulled back to say, “In all seriousness, I want it to be a very straightforward, prosaic, unemotional treaty. A presentation of land.”

 

“I get it,” Archer said. “You’ll be quick about it?”

 

“Yes. Plan our ball with whatever proper protocol Jadenvale requires and we’ll talk about it when I get back.”

 

Archer nodded. “Yeah. Sure. But you’re not leaving until tomorrow.”

 

“I’m not leaving until tomorrow,” Bennet confirmed.

 

“So, tonight, I think you had promises to keep.”

 

“Did I?” said Bennet. “Remind me.”

 

“I’ll remind you,” said Archer. “In my bedroom.”

 

“I’m not sure that’s the proper protocol,” said Bennet.

 

“Shut up,” said Archer, and shut him up.


	12. Chapter 12

Queen Alexandra of Jadenvale sat in her bedroom, in the delicately carved chair of rich Jadenvalian copperwood that had belonged to her mother, and looked at her reflection in the mirror. She looked at the complicated swirl of her red-gold hair, pinned into place so tightly that morning by her maid that she’d been fighting a headache all day. She fought a headache most days when had to wear the Jadenvale diamonds. She tried to blame that entirely on the heavy coil of her thick hair.

 

She’d dismissed the maid that night. Dinner had been quiet, just her and Alice, and Alex had no idea where everyone else had been and almost didn’t care. They’d been off living carefree lives, Alex thought. They’d been off sailing, or eating fried fish and drinking starlight in a pub, or buying silly souvenirs. Alex didn’t think she needed to know the details.

 

Alex took a deep breath and forced herself to start taking the diamonds out of her hair. Each one she removed sent another thick tendril of hair falling to her shoulders, down to her back. Each one added to the small table in front of her, until there was a small mountain of brilliant diamonds tumbling over themselves, catching the flickering lights in the glass globes around Alex’s room.

 

Alex looked back at her reflection, very different than it had been with the curtain of her hair softly down. Alex had lovely hair, her mother’s hair, hair her mother before had been inordinately proud of. Her mother had brushed it every night, murmuring over the thick cascade of it, gossiping with Alex in her low musical voice.

 

It had been so many years, and Alex still missed her mother like _crazy_. She missed the fact that no one saw her hair like this anymore, that it was always tucked up and away for the public, because that way she looked like a queen, and this way she looked like a lost and helpless girl.

 

Alex picked up the brush she’d left in front of her and slowly started brushing her hair out, counting as she went.

 

She was at 72 when the knock sounded on the door.

 

She closed her eyes momentarily for patience and then called, “I said not tonight!”

 

“It’s Princess Ava,” came the voice on the other side of the door.

 

Alex looked at the surprise evident on her reflection. She looked at the gauzy robe she was wearing instead of anything official. She looked at her tumbled hair. And then she thought, _Fuck it_. Curiosity sent her up and to the door.

 

Princess Ava said, “Your Majesty. Hi. I didn’t mean to bother you,” and then did that curious low bow that the Euphonians were so fond of. When she straightened, she focused on Alex’s hair and said, “Wow, you have beautiful hair.”

 

Alex, feeling self-conscious, gathered her hair into her hands and twisted it behind her head. “Was there something I could do for you, Eminence?”

 

“I wanted to talk about Archer, if I could.”

 

“Archer?” Alex hadn’t expect this to be the topic of conversation, and alarm filled her. Archer hadn’t been at dinner, but Archer had been so rebellious lately, so unpredictable, Alex hadn’t thought to be concerned at that… “Is he alright?”

 

“Oh, he’s fine, as far as I know. I mean, immediately fine. I just wanted to talk to you about…well, I guess I wanted to talk to you about my brother.”

 

Princess Ava’s brother, who Alex had just agreed to allow to marry her baby brother. Dread filled Alex. _Here comes the catch_ , she thought. Nothing could ever go entirely smoothly.

 

“You’d better come in,” said Alex, opening the door wider.

 

“Don’t sound grim,” Princess Ava said, accepting the invitation and actually sitting _on Alex’s bed_ , like that was a thing that was _allowed_. “Bennet’s besotted with Archer.”

 

Alex was staring at the sight of Ava on her bed. _Another person. On her bed_. She blinked out of that reverie and managed to say intelligently, “What?”

 

Ava cocked her head a little but didn’t ask why Alex was behaving so oddly. She just said, “My brother’s very in love with Archer. And he’s a good person. He’s very sweet to people that he loves. He has always been very good to me, the best, and it occurred to me…I was talking to Alice and the way she was talking…Maybe I should go.”

 

Alex wondered what she looked like that had changed Ava’s mind about this. She forced herself to pull herself together, forced herself to ignore the fact that she was barely dressed and had her hair down. She sat on the bed beside Ava, as if this was something she was totally accustomed to, and said, “No. I’m sorry. Please go on. This is important to me.”

 

Ava was studying Alex’s face closely. “You want what’s best for Archer.”

 

“Naturally I want what’s best for Archer,” Alex agreed impatiently.

 

“Yes. I know. But he doesn’t. He won’t see it that way. I know because I’m basically Archer, in a very different body and with a very different personality, but…You think you’re doing the right thing, right? Trying to protect him. But you’ve got to let him go. It’s important to let us… _be_. He’s in love, Alex. Have you ever been in love?”

 

_Calling her Alex_. Alex stared at Ava on her bed, the pitch-black Jadenvalian hair in its riot of curls, her very dark and bright eyes, and said faintly, “No. That’s a fairy tale for commoners.”

 

“Commoners.” Ava smiled. She had a twisting curve of a smile, the smile of someone who was used to it, who didn’t have to coax her muscles into the unfamiliar shape. “Commoners do it very well, it’s true, but we royals can do it well enough when we set our minds to it. He’s in love. And, unlike me, he was all clever about it and fell in love with this really spectacular person who loves him back and is going to cherish him beyond belief. I cannot think of anything you could possibly want more for Archer. And I know you might think I’m biased but I swear I’m not. Promise.” Ava’s smile widened into a grin.

 

Alex sat, not knowing what to make of this. And so she said that. “I’m not sure what you want from me.”

 

“Talk to Archer. Actually talk to him. Not as a monarch but as a sister. We’re just as lonely as you, you know. We need to stick together.”

 

Alex stared at Ava. Then she nodded slowly.

 

Ava nodded in return, clapped her hands once like she’d just issued a command, and then hopped off the bed. “Good,” she said. “You have beautiful hair, you should wear it down more often.”

 

Like that was a _possibility_.

 

Alex was too shocked to say anything at all as Ava slipped out the bedroom door.


	13. Chapter 13

Archer woke to Bennet blowing in his ear.

 

At least, he hoped it was Bennet.

 

“That had better be you blowing in my ear, Bennet,” he grumbled into his pillow.

 

“It’s me,” confirmed Bennet, sounding amused.

 

“Why are you blowing in my ear?”

 

“If I don’t do it, who will?” asked Bennet calmly.

 

“Go back to sleep,” Archer told his pillow.

 

“I can’t. You can. But I wanted to say good-bye.”

 

This got Archer to roll over, blinking up at Bennet. The sun was bright in the room behind Bennet’s head but the angle was low enough that Archer knew it was still early. Archer knew the sunlight in this room, knew the timing of it. He said, “Good-bye? What? Already?”

 

“I want to get an early start.”

 

Archer sat up, rubbing sleep out of his eyes. “You’re already dressed.”

 

“Yes. I had a lovely bath, and then I got dressed, and then I got Trix to get me something to eat—some really delicious fruit that you have here, it was all pink—and now I’m leaving.”

 

Archer stared at him. “You did all this, and you just let me sleep?”

 

“Why disturb you? I exhausted you last night, you needed to recover.” Bennet sounded smug, reaching out to tousle Archer’s hair.

 

Archer scowled at him. “I exhausted you, too.”

 

Bennet smiled. “Fine. We exhausted each other.”

 

“You still should have woken me.” Archer felt petulant. He was aware mostly this was because he’d been woken abruptly and so was grouchy about it. But still.

 

“I’m bad at waking you when you’re sleeping well. You know that you often don’t sleep well? You’re fitful when you sleep.”

 

Archer blinked, because he hadn’t been aware of that. “Am I?”

 

“Yes. So when you’re sleeping peacefully, I prefer to let you be. There will be enough mornings when I have to wake you. This wasn’t one of them. Now, I’ll be back soon—”

 

“Wait.” Archer closed his hands into Bennet’s collar to make sure he stayed right there until Archer was done with him. “Who’s going with you?”

 

“What do you mean? I didn’t bring any attendants, I’m going by myself.”

 

Archer gave him a look. “Bennet.”

 

“I’ll be fine. I’m getting on a train and taking it to The End.”

 

“And then you have to cross the Graveyard.”

 

“There’ll be merchants to escort me.”

 

“I didn’t find merchants amenable to escorting me.”

 

“Right, but you’re an impossible, headstrong, sulky brat, and I’m their king.”

 

“It’s unclear to me why I’m marrying you.”

 

Bennet grinned. “I refer you, Eminence, to memories of last night.”

 

“Fine. I guess,” Archer allowed grudgingly. “Take Trix with you.”

 

“Absolutely not. Trix stays here with you.”

 

“I won’t need protection, I’m in a palace. Anyway, nobody—”

 

Bennet put a finger against Archer’s lips. “If you were about to say that nobody cares about you, swallow that sentiment right this instant. And you might not need protection, but you will need a friend. Trix stays here.”

 

Archer said around Bennet’s finger, “You’re not going alone.”

 

Bennet looked at him for a long moment. Then he said, “Fine. Shall I ask your sister to borrow some attendants?”

 

“No.” Archer threw back the sheets and got out of bed. “I’m going to select them for you personally.”


	14. Chapter 14

Archer saw Bennet off with a bevy of his sister’s finest attendants, all of whom seemed slightly bewildered to have been pressed into service but to hesitant to cross the very determined Archer. Bennet kissed him up against the wall and said thickly, “Fuck, I’m going to miss you, don’t order too many people around in my absence, I want to witness every time you order people around.”

 

“I’ll order you around right now,” Archer said. “I want you back here with a signed treaty before I have time to miss you.”

 

“Consider it done, Eminence,” said Bennet. “I wouldn’t dare defy Jadenvale’s terrifying Only Prince.”

 

Archer sighed and pretended like Bennet was very trying and unbearable.   

 

Then Archer went inside and determined not to feel sorry for himself. He didn’t feel much like breakfast, so he stole himself some space in the palace’s library, where he felt most at home, surrounded by books, and set a piece of paper in front of himself and contemplated its blankness.

 

“Are you hiding?” Trix asked, coming upon him.

 

“No, I am working,” Archer replied.

 

Trix tossed an orange at Archer, who caught it automatically. “Eat, would you?”

 

“You’re so disrespectful,” said Archer.

 

“Eat, _sir_ ,” said Trix.

 

Archer pretended he wasn’t smiling as he dug into the orange’s skin.

 

“What are you working on?” Trix asked.

 

“Planning an engagement ball and a royal wedding. Although I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing. I’ve never planned either thing before. We’ve never even had one in my lifetime.”

 

“Then probably you can just make it up,” suggested Trix.

 

Archer gave her a look. “There’s no way. There’s some kind of proper protocol. This is why more things should be like science.”

 

“Weddings should be more like science, sir?”

 

“They’d be easier to plan if they followed a formula. If I fuck this whole thing up, Alex will be annoyed with me.”

 

“I’m sure that’s not true, sir,” said Trix.

 

Archer made a skeptical noise and twirled his quill in his hand.

 

Trix sat silently and let Archer think. Which was why Archer kept Trix around.

 

Eventually Trix said, “It occurs to me…”

 

“What?” asked Archer.

 

“If you’re looking for proper protocols for this kind of thing, they might be in one of these books.”

 

Archer considered. That wasn’t a crazy idea. There were a lot of books in the library and Archer hadn’t spent a lot of time in the historical section. Archer had never really wanted to know more about Jadenvale’s history. What he knew was heartbreaking enough for him. He hadn’t wanted to know more about the people he couldn’t help but feel abandoned by. He should have known his parents without resorting to books. He didn’t, so he’d refused to turn to the books as a consolation prize, in a fit of stubborn pique.

 

He was, he had to admit, good at stubborn pique.

 

But Archer was about to get married. Archer was about to _move on_. Archer was about to leave this place, get out from under the weight of the absent parents here in Jadenvale.

 

And, for the first time, he thought maybe he wanted to know about them. Maybe the books wouldn’t hurt.

 

“Yeah,” he said slowly. “You might be right, Trix.”


	15. Chapter 15

The books were treasure troves.

 

Books, in Archer’s experience, generally were.

 

But _these_ books… Archer sat with dozens of them stacked around them, and he read and read and read. He knew objectively that he was supposed to be reading about engagement balls and wedding arrangements but he was too lost in the story about his great-great-grandmother had originally opened the trade routes after going on an around-the-world voyage when she had been Crown Princess. Her father the King had been furious, but the history books described her as “headstrong” and “stubborn” and Archer looked at the illustration of her, dressed in odd clothing, with a crown crooked on her wavy brown hair, and Archer felt his breath catch and stutter with an odd feeling of…recognition. And he wasn’t used to that. He’d never felt…recognition…before. He’d never seen himself in this family, in this palace. He’d never felt part of a line, a legacy, a story that made sense, that had an arc. He’d never seen himself woven into a tapestry instead of just flung on the side.

 

His great-grandmother, he learned, was the one who had entered into the treaty over the no-man’s-land in the western mountains. At the time a series of unusually rainy years had been affecting the Jadenvalian crops. They had started encroaching on the land in the western mountains that the Euphonians had been using for livestock. The two kingdoms, rather than go to war over the strip of land, negotiated a no-man’s-land, and then Jadenvale’s easy climate had returned and the no-man’s-land had lessened in importance.

 

So the no-man’s-land, thought Archer, had really belonged to Euphonia in the first place.

 

Archer marked the page to show Alex later.

 

His grandfather had been shy, hadn’t ventured out much, didn’t really talk to other kingdoms. By then Jadenvalian trade was well-entrenched, but the Jadenvalian royal family developed a reputation for being insular. Archer’s father, Archer learned, had himself had a reputation for being bookish, and very interested in the science of the currents of the bay leading to the ocean. But, while bookish, he had clearly had an adventurous streak has well. He had gone to sea, on a boat with a sea captain with whom he fell in love: Archer’s mother.

 

This was a story Archer had known in the abstract but he had never really connected it to himself before, for some reason. His parents had met on a voyage, he had been told, but he had not been told of the fact that his mother had been a _sea captain_ , that his father had gone out in search of the _adventure_ that Archer had longed for all his life. Somehow, he had thought them focused and serious, more like Alex than him. After all, they had been the monarchs. But he was seeing now that it might not be quite that straightforward, the idea that only Alex resembled their parents.

 

Archer was staring at the illustrations in the book—his mother, looking so much like Alex, only somehow younger than Archer had ever seen Alex; his father, looking so much like Alice—when Alex said softly, “Arch.”

 

Archer looked up, startled out of his immersion in the pages, startled to find his sister there, paused by the edge of the bookshelves, watching him.

 

“Oh,” said Archer, feeling as if he’d been caught out. “I was, um, looking for information, about the protocols, for engagement balls and royal weddings. And stuff.”

 

“Of course,” said Alex. “Research. How very you. Have you found anything?”

 

Archer looked down at the book open on his lap, at his parents’ faces. He didn’t really know how to answer that question. “Yes and no.”

 

Alex said slowly, as if unsure of herself, “I would like to speak with you, Archer.”

 

Archer looked back up at her, annoyed. “Is this about how I sent some attendants with Bennet? Because I—”

 

“No,” said Alex, surprising Archer. “That was good of you, he needed attendants. I don’t know what he thought he was about rushing off without them in the first place.” Alex picked her way carefully through Archer’s piles of books.

 

Archer didn’t know what to make of this. He watched Alex warily, as she sat in a chair beside him. Archer himself was on the floor—he hadn’t realized that he had sunk straight to the floor in his fascination with the books—so he found himself looking up at her. “Then what do you want to talk to me about?” he said.

 

“Tell me about Bennet,” said Alex.

 

“Tell you what about him?” asked Archer, not understanding.

 

“I don’t know him very well,” said Alex. “I don’t know him at all. All I know is he showed up disheveled and without attendants, rather recklessly asking for my little brother’s hand in marriage. You understand that it seems…sudden. Rash. Concerning.”

 

Archer frowned at Alex. “Concerning? No. I don’t understand that it seems ‘concerning.’ What’s concerning about it?”

 

“That it’s sudden,” said Alex.

 

“Not every decision has to take forever to make.”

 

“The best ones do,” said Alex.

 

“I see,” said Archer sarcastically. “So what would suit you better? Shall I go back to Euphonia and wait longer before coming back here to you? What period of time would you find acceptable? Six months? A year? You know, I don’t understand you. You were ready to marry me off to Ava without worrying about rash, concerning decisions.”

 

“Because they were,” said Alex.

 

For a moment Archer didn’t know who she was talking about. Then he realized that she was gazing down at their parents’ likenesses in the book still open on his lap.

 

“I have so few of their decisions to guide me,” continued Alex achingly.

 

Archer blinked up at her, surprised, because they didn’t talk about these things, they didn’t really talk about their parents and their loss.

 

“They left me with no instructions,” said Alex, her blues eyes wide and anguished. “You have to understand that I…The decisions they did make, that they left me with, I want to…trust. I want them to be the right ones. There are so few of them left. They decided to marry you to Ava, and—”

 

“I was a baby,” Archer said. “They didn’t know anything about me when they made that decision, they didn’t know how I would turn out to be.”

 

“Exactly,” said Alex, smiling at Archer with such fondness that he was bewildered by it, had no idea how to react. “You were the baby. You were _their_ baby. You don’t remember, because you were too young, but they doted on you. You were always asking why, always, and so curious about everything, so inquisitive. Even before you could read, you would take books to bed with you, as if you knew instinctively how you would love them someday. When you learned to walk, virtually the first thing you did was to start escaping. We couldn’t find rooms that would hold you. They loved that about you. _Their adventurer_ , they called you. You were like them, Arch. You wanted the entire world and nothing else would be enough for you. I know, my darling prince, how much you have longed not to be here, and I know I’ve kept you, and that is because I am not like them. I’ve never had that streak. The world is a terrifying place, with danger lurking around every corner, and their sense of adventure killed them and left us all alone, and I couldn’t have that happen to you. You were their precious baby who they adored. I had to keep you. And when I sent you to Ava I did it thinking it was what they wanted. But now you come back, and you’re different, your sense of adventure has been sparked and you’re so full of life and determination and if you think that doesn’t terrify me, to let you off into a kingdom I don’t know and don’t comprehend…I could do it with Ava because Mom and Dad told me to. Without that, Archer, this is terrifying to me. I just want to keep you safe. I can’t do it when you’re out of this palace.”

 

Archer sat, too stunned to speak for a second. It was the longest he thought Alex had ever spoken to him in their lives. And Alex, for the first time in his memory, looked not like a cool, irreproachable, put-together queen but like a scared and lonely girl. The scared and lonely girl she must have been at twelve. Archer had had such sympathy for Bennet, for the role he had been thrust into at so early an age, and he had been so remiss in not recognizing that it had been just as difficult for Alex, and she had handled it in her own way.

 

Archer slid the book from his lap and shifted and placed his hands around Alex’s, where they were twisted tight together on her lap. Alex looked up from her contemplation of them to Archer.

 

Archer said, “Bennet will keep me safe for you. I’m very precious to him. He loves me very much. I’m going to be fine in Euphonia.”

 

Alex, to Archer’s astonishment, had actual tears in her eyes. “It doesn’t mean I won’t miss you.”

 

“I’ll come back all the time. There isn’t any reason why there isn’t more contact between the two kingdoms. There should be lots of contact. That’s what Mother and Father wanted. They didn’t want me for Ava. They wanted me for _Euphonia_. And that’s what I’m doing. I’m going to be a prince in both kingdoms, Alex. And you should come visit me there. You and Alice.”

 

“Would we like it?”

 

“It takes some getting used to,” said Archer, “but it’s beautiful in its own way.”

 

“It doesn’t surprise me that you love it. You have always appreciated different sorts of beauty. You’ve always been open-minded about that.”

 

Archer didn’t know what to make of that, either. It wasn’t exactly how he saw himself. “I suppose,” he allowed.

 

Alex slid her hands out from between Archer’s so she could close them over his instead, flipping their order. She said, “My little prince, I will give you your king of Euphonia on one condition.”

 

Archer pointed out, “You’ve already signed the treaty.”

 

Alex shook her head. “This is a special condition. Just between us.”

 

“Okay,” said Archer uncertainly.

 

“You may have him, for as long as he makes you happy. And if he ceases to, if you ever want to come home for whatever reason, you will come immediately. You are too precious to be unhappy, Archer.”

 

It was an odd thing for her to say, Archer thought, considering that he felt as if he had been mostly unhappy his entire life, until meeting Bennet. He had been lonely and aimless and lost, and Bennet made him laugh, and made him feel alive, and made him feel amazing. But maybe, Archer thought, maybe he’d been unhappy because he’d been bad at knowing what would make him happy, and maybe Alex had had no way of knowing what to do for him until he’d told her, and maybe she had just been trying to keep him safe without knowing how unhappy that would make him, because their personalities were too different to comprehend what made the other miserable.

 

Archer thought of the Jadenvalian Crown Princess who had sailed the world, and her father who had never understood. He thought of his shy and isolated grandfather, and the rebellious son that grandfather had had. He thought of how many generations of Jadenvalian royalty had had to contend with these very different personality types being all smashed up together.

 

Archer nodded, because he didn’t know what else to say that would be halfway adequate.

 

Alex smiled at him. “Tell me what you learned about the proper protocols for an engagement ball and a royal wedding.”

 

“Nothing,” Archer admitted. “But I did learn that the no-man’s-land in the western mountains was Euphonian to begin with.”

 

Alex huffed a small laugh. “Of course you learned that.”

 

“And our mother was a _sea captain_?”

 

“Surely you knew that? Surely we told you that?”

 

“I think you sold her short. The books say she won a number of sea battles against _pirates_.”

 

Alex’s smile was lovelier than any Archer had seen her wear before, nostalgic, reminiscent. “Dad used to talk about those. Mom said he was exaggerating all of it.”

 

Archer’s chest twinged, an actual pain in his heart. This was why he’d never really asked these questions before, because it physically hurt him that he hadn’t gotten to know his parents well enough to know these things, that he couldn’t remember these little family stories that Alex could so effortlessly. Part of him thought that maybe he didn’t want to know them, that it would just hurt him more.

 

But then Alex said, “I think we’ve been remiss, in not telling you more about them. We’ve made them more dead than they actually are. When in reality as long as we remember them, some part of them is alive. And so much of them is alive in you. Mom had many treasures, from all over the world, that she kept in a chest in her bedroom. I have never known what to do with them, since her death, so I just kept them all locked up. But I should have given them, long ago, to you. Would you like them?”

 

_Treasures from all over the world._ Archer was breathless. “ _Yes_ ,” he said.


	16. Chapter 16

_Dear Bennet,_

_I have a lot to tell you. It’s been a busy day. I know you only left a few hours ago, you’re probably not even to The End yet, and I’ll probably never even show you this letter, because I’ll just tell you all of this when I see you, but I wanted to make sure that I don’t forget any of it. And I guess maybe I thought that writing it down will remind me that it all really happened._

_After I sent you off with all of the attendants—WHICH ALEX AGREES WITH ME YOU DESPERATELY NEEDED AND WE NEVER AGREE ON ANYTHING SO I AM NOW COUNTING MYSELF AS BEING DOUBLY RIGHT ABOUT THAT—Trix suggested that maybe what I should do would be to look in the history books for information about the proper protocols I should be following for the engagement ball and the royal wedding._

_I never read any of the history books before. They seemed irrelevant. All of that stuff had happened to other people and none of it was going to change the course of my life. And there were so many other books in the library to read._

_But the history books, I must admit, were very useful. You should know, by the way, that Euphonia gave up the no-man’s-land a few generations ago. I don’t think we should revise the wedding treaty but I think that’s rightfully and historically your land and you might to want fight Alex on that a bit more._

_My mother was a SEA CAPTAIN, Bennet. Like, a person who ACTUALLY WENT IN BOATS ALL AROUND THE WORLD. Can you imagine??? When we were sitting on my boat just the other day and I was talking about how much I’d wanted to see the world, I’d never fully grasped that my mother had. I just feel like it was never said to me in that many words? Or something._

_Anyway, Alex came in while I was reading all about my mother’s voyages and she and I actually had a good talk. Like, a real talk. I’m not sure we’ve ever had one of those in my whole life. You know how you’re always asking me questions? You know how you want to know about me? I feel like I’ve never had that before, I feel like Alex never really thought to figure me out, but maybe, I don’t know, I also didn’t do a good job of telling her about me? And I never really bothered to figure her out, either? Like, maybe all along I’ve been blaming her for things that aren’t really her fault or that she didn’t actually intend. I don’t know. Is it like that with you and Ava? Do you ask Ava what she wants? I worry that you don’t, since I know for a fact Ava didn’t want me. (At the same time, I’m inclined to forgive you for that, because it got me to Euphonia, but I feel like Ava would be justified in making you do something extra-nice for her. I might suggest it to her.)_

_Anyway, we talked, Alex and I, and I think that I figured out why she was being so fucking difficult about the treaty: I think she was scared. To her, you are this great unknown, and that’s scary. I told her you’re not an unknown to me, that I know exactly how horrible you are and I’m willing to put up with you. I told her you would keep me safe. So I think she expects that now. But you’d better not suffocate me or I’ll run right back to Jadenvale. Or maybe I’ll get on a ship and follow my mother’s example around the world._

_Speaking of my mother, it turns out she left behind her this most astonishing collection of treasures from everywhere she went. Alex showed them to me. They’re gorgeous, Bennet. You should see all of them. I’ll show you when you get back. Alex knew stories about a lot of them and so she could tell me where they’d come from, vaguely. They were amazing. And I’m going to catalog all of them and see what I can learn about each of the kingdoms. After I deal with Euphonia’s melting glacier issue, of course. Which I haven’t forgotten about._

_Alex has sent by ship invitations for our wedding to our trading partners. There is no date on the invitation, I requested that it say they should arrive as soon as possible. As soon as you return from Euphonia, I plan to marry you and then make you turn around and go right back. We’ll honeymoon in that ridiculous inn that The End has, or maybe on a mountain yak, or maybe in some miserable little tent we’ve set up on the Graveyard, or maybe in some pub where we can try to be anonymous and you can seduce me through dancing again._

_I miss you kind of desperately. I keep looking around to find you so I can tell you things, but you’re not here. I thought this letter would help but it’s just made me imagine what your side of the conversation would be, what you would say, how you would smirk at me, how you definitely wouldn’t let me get through this many sentences without kissing me at least once. It’s unforgivable, how long I have now gone without a kiss from you. If you could have left me some kisses bottled up, I would have appreciated it. Now I recognize I am just writing to delay going to bed, because you won’t be there, and you’re right, you know, I’ll sleep fitfully without you._

_Well, that settles it, clearly I can never show you this extremely humiliating letter, so I might as well say: Things are very dull without you. I’m not sure I’m ever going to let you out of my sight ever again._

_Love,_

_Archer_


	17. Chapter 17

_Dear Archer,_

_It turns out that Euphonia is fucking cold. Did you know that, my lovely prince? I was so hot in Jadenvale I couldn’t breathe, and now I get back to Euphonia and I’m so cold I can’t breathe._

_Or maybe that’s just missing you? Either way, I am heartily sick of traveling. I would like to just stay still for a little while. With you, naturally. I’d like to stay still with you. I have no desire to stay still like this._

_Oh, and all of those attendants you insisted I bring are incredibly bothersome. Impossible to travel incognito. They made the hugest fuss in The End about the whole retinue, and I had to explain who I was, and then they were suspicious, and everyone wanted to know where you were, because apparently when you went to The End you performed magic for them. Are you magical? I suppose that would make some sense, you being you. Just please don’t curse me or my goats. _

_I had, you should know, merchants falling down over themselves trying to coax me into traveling with them. Never let it be said that Jadenvale has the market cornered on hospitality. I chose the merchant who was embarking across the Graveyard the soonest. Accommodations are not the best, but we’re almost through it now. We’re resting the mountain yaks and warming our extremities by a few fires, and all I can think is that you and Trix did this in Jadenvalian clothing, with no guide. Archer, my love, I was glad to meet you, and to meet you in the manner that I did, I fell for you as soon as you introduced yourself by cursing me, but I am cold with terror over the risk you took with yourself here, over how differently it all could have turned out. No wonder you insisted I bring attendants. The thought of you out here alone makes me ache, and that isn’t just the cold._

_It will be another couple of days’ journey to the main palace. I’ve sent word on ahead to gather the council, so I should have approval of the treaty shortly and then commence the trip back to you. The attendants will be glad of it, I think. Their Jadenvalian blood is absolutely shocked. They haven’t complained—your sister has remarkably respectful attendants, how does she do that?—but I sense they may not count you as a particular favorite after this journey. If you were the sort to need attendants other than Trix, I would tell you to avoid these._

_I miss you. I’m in an absolutely miserable mood. Everything is annoying me. This place is home for me, and yet I feel utterly bereft. It turns out I left home when I left you. You would scoff at that, I know. You would scowl your lovely mouth and roll your lovely eyes. This is how very hopeless I am over you. I miss even your scowl._

_I feel you deserve a love letter. You would not think so. You would be appalled. But you wouldn’t really be appalled. You’d just pretend to be. You’d actually take the letter and tuck it next to your heart and smile about it in secret. I know you, you know. So I feel you deserve a love letter from me, overflowing with sentimental effusion, a long detailed list of everything about you that I adore. _

_But the merchants are packing up the mountain yaks and putting out the fires and I don’t want to be a reason for delay so you will have to settle for this, my Eminence:_

_You. I adore—you._

_It’s a short list._

_Love,_

_Bennet_


	18. Chapter 18

Alice spent her afternoon shopping. Not really. Pretending to shop, she supposed. Spent her afternoon pretending to be smitten by all of the wares on display in the local shops. Not that she didn’t approve of the local shops but her afternoons in them weren’t exactly carefree and easy-going. Instead, she was followed desperately around by staff and she had to be sure to tell each of them how equally amazing everything in the store was. If she bestowed her favor unequally, it started sniping disagreements that the newspaper reported on gleefully. It was a mistake Alice would never make again.

 

Arriving back at the palace, Alice found Ava falling into step beside her, munching on a pear. Alice felt like Ava was always popping up, which, Alice supposed, meant Ava was never entirely unexpected.

 

“Where have you been?” Ava asked as they walked along. Not accusingly, just frankly, like she was making conversation.

 

“Shopping,” Alice replied. “I try to make myself go shopping at least once a month.”

 

“Make yourself go shopping?” said Ava. “You don’t sound as if you enjoy it very much.”

 

“Not particularly. It’s a chore like any other.”

 

Ava looked thoughtful. “What sort of things are you shopping for?”

 

“Anything and everything Jadenvale sells. It’s in my job description. I can’t be seen to play favorites.”

 

“You’re a good little royal, Alice,” remarked Ava, still munching on her pear.

 

Which made Alice bristle, since it sounded so… _condescending_.  “Alex has one difficult sibling to deal with,” Alice said. “I didn’t want to give her another one.”

 

“You know,” said Ava lightly, “it’s saying stuff like that that makes Archer feel uncertain about being accepted by the two of you for who he is.”

 

Alice, after a second, sighed heavily, because it _had_ been a petty thing to say, and she wished she could help the defensive motivation that had driven her to say it. “I know. Sorry. I didn’t mean it. I just…really don’t like shopping.”

 

“I don’t think you’re shopping for the right things,” said Ava. “And I definitely don’t think you’re shopping in the right way.”

 

“Did anyone ever tell you that you’re brilliant at being condescending?” said Alice sharply. Because apparently she _really_ wasn’t in the mood.

 

Ava was silent, then said, “Yes, actually. Sorry. It’s a thing I do when I’m feeling…” Ava made a hand motion Alice couldn’t quite interpret. Then she blurted out, “Your sister invited me to dinner with the family.”

 

“You’ve been to dinner with us before,” said Alice.

 

“Right,” said Ava, “but my brother left for Euphonia this morning, so he could procure the council’s approval of the wedding treaty. So it’s just…me, at dinner. So she didn’t have to invite me for any diplomatic reason.”

 

“She probably invited you exactly because your brother is away. She wouldn’t want you to be lonely. It’s not a big deal. Are you worrying about it?”

 

“A little. You have so many protocols here. When Bennet’s around, I don’t worry about fucking them all up, because I know he’ll apologize on my behalf. But I’m not good at diplomacy. I mean, as you’ve just pointed out, I have a tendency to be a tad condescending when I’m feeling uncertain.”

 

“A tad,” agreed Alice wryly.

 

“I just don’t want to fuck this up for Bennet and Archer. I don’t want your sister to change her mind and rescind the treaty because I’m an undesirable relation to have in the family.”

 

Alice stopped walking so she could look at Ava. “Alex wouldn’t do that. And you’re not an undesirable relation to have in the family. Do you really think that?”

 

Ava stopped walking as well. She looked at Alex evenly with inscrutable dark eyes. “Do you really think that you can’t be who you are because it would be too much trouble for Alex to deal with?” she countered, and then took another bite of her pear.

 

Alice opened her mouth, but realized she didn’t really have a response to that. Because she genuinely didn’t know the answer to that question. _Did_ she really think that? She had no idea.

 

Ava seemed not to expect her to have an answer, thankfully, saying, “So I shouldn’t worry about this dinner? Alexandra doesn’t have some kind of strategic trick hidden in those odd Jadenvalian sleeves of hers?”

 

“They’re not odd,” Alice said automatically.

 

“Got it,” Ava said with a smile. “I will make sure not to comment on the odd Jadenvalian sleeves at dinner.”

 

“They’re really not odd,” insisted Alice, because it was easier to think about Jadenvalian sleeves than…all the rest of it.

 

Ava’s smile widened into a grin. “I am going to go change for dinner. I am going to wear odd Euphonian sleeves and hope that they’re not tragic breaches of protocol. And I am not going to be nervous about your sister’s motivations. Thank you for the advice, Alice.” Ava leaned forward and kissed Alice’s cheek.

 

Alice, wide-eyed, froze into place.

 

And then Ava said, “You’re looking exhausted, you should definitely freshen up before dinner.”

 

Alice frowned.

 

Ava said, “Sorry, was that being condescending?” and actually winked before moving off down the hallway.


	19. Chapter 19

“You’re out on the terrace,” said Alice, sounding very surprised to have encountered Alex sitting there.

 

“So are you,” Alex pointed out.

 

“Yes,” agreed Alice. “But I am frequently out on the terrace, and you never are.”

 

Alex frowned. “I come out on the terrace sometimes.”

 

Alice lifted her eyebrows skeptically but didn’t pursue it, and Alex wondered if she dropped it because Alex was her sister or because Alex was her queen, and then she hated herself for wondering that. Alice just said, “I was looking for Archer. He’s not by the pool or in his room. Have you seen him?”

 

“He was in the library when I spoke to him earlier. He may have gone back there.”

 

“You spoke to him?” Alice, standing up against the balustrade of the terrace, looked grim, like she was bracing herself to deal with some sort of intense family drama.

 

“At ease,” Alex said. “It was a good talk, I think. I’m fairly certain I didn’t upset him.”

 

“Did you talk to him about the wedding treaty? Please don’t make him nervous about that. Last night at dinner you said you found the deal acceptable—”

 

“I do,” Alex interrupted her. “I’m not upset about the wedding treaty.”

 

“It’s just that Archer doesn’t want his wedding to be a transaction. He doesn’t like having to think about it that way.”

 

Alex looked at Alice consideringly, cocking her head to the side a little. Alice, her dark gold hair in a plait down her back, looked tired, exhaustion pinching around her blue eyes. Alex wondered if Alice had been living recently in a constant state of high alert, trying to broker peace between Alex and Archer. Alex wondered how, in her quest to not miss anything going on in her kingdom, she had managed to basically miss _everything_ going on in her palace.

 

“It’s a full-time job, isn’t it?” remarked Alex eventually. “Translating between Archer and me.”

 

Alice, after a moment, said carefully, “It’s just that you’re both very different, except for how you’re both very stubborn, and I’m not sure either of you is very good at understanding the other.”

 

“Well, we talked, and it was a very nice talk, and I feel that I understand him somewhat better, and I hope that he understands me somewhat better.”

 

Alice said, “And you’re sure he’s still in the palace, right? He didn’t…run away to Euphonia or anything like that?”

 

Alex couldn’t even get herself to be offended. She just bubbled helpless laughter. “Such a vote of confidence. Thank you. I promise you, it was not that sort of conversation. I showed him Mom’s treasure chest. You remember the one? The one she used to keep under her bed?”

 

Alice looked surprised. “Mom’s treasure chest. I haven’t thought about that in years.”

 

“I know. I forgot all about it. But it suddenly occurred to me that Archer might love it. And he did. I might give it to him for a wedding present.”

 

Alice smiled widely. “He would love that. Alex, I’m really so happy that you’ve come to realize Bennet’s worth for Archer. I mean, not in a formal good-for-the-kingdom sense. I mean in the good-for-Archer sense.”

 

“Archer does seem happier, which I am always in favor of. And King David’s sister is quite devoted. Any sibling spoken of so highly must be a very worthy sibling indeed. She was compelling in her assessment of his best features.”

 

Alice drew her eyebrows together, looking thoughtful. “You spoke to Ava about all of this?”

 

“Yes. Last night.” Alex considered adding _in my bedroom_ , but the sheer enormous impropriety of that was overwhelming Alex to contemplate. So she just didn’t say it out loud. That made it seem less real, easier to dismiss as some sort of fevered hallucination.

 

Although Alice seemed to draw the _bedroom_ conclusion anyway. “Last night?” she echoed.

 

Alex said, as if strange people showed up in her bedroom on a daily basis, “She made an impassioned plea on Archer’s behalf. Claimed to understand him very well, given their similar life stories. Vouched for her brother. And advised me to listen to what Archer had to say and understand his point of view.”

 

After a moment of silence Alice said, “And you did?”

 

Alex frowned. “Why do you sound so disbelieving? Do you think me incapable of understanding what it’s like to be in love?”

 

“I didn’t think you were an expert, no,” said Alice.

 

Alex couldn’t help but flinch at that comment.

 

Alice sighed and said, “Sorry. I’m so sorry. I went shopping today and it apparently put me in a foul mood.”

 

“The palace has been tense lately,” Alex allowed. “Some of that could have been my fault.” That was the most she was willing to admit. She was, after all, still the Queen.

 

“Is that why you invited Ava to dinner?” Alice asked.

 

“Oh,” said Alex, caught off-guard. “How do you know about that?”

 

“I spoke to Ava. I think she was worrying about following all of the proper protocols.”

 

Alex couldn’t help arching an eyebrow dryly. “Ava was worried about following proper protocols? Since when?”

 

Alice laughed. “Yeah, I hear you on that. Anyway, it was nice of you. She’s alone in a strange land and we’re the closest thing she has to family right now. I hope Euphonia treats our prince well, so we ought to treat its princess well.”

 

“Yes,” Alex agreed. “Precisely what I was thinking.”

 

She had not been thinking about Euphonia or royal obligations or diplomacy at all.

 

But Alice didn’t need to know that.


	20. Chapter 20

Ava’s clothes were no longer fitting her. Not as well as they once had.

 

She turned in the mirror and smoothed a hand over the small swell of her stomach, straining against the cloth of her tunic. She was going to have to ditch her Euphonian pants soon, she thought. Maybe start dressing in the flowing hazy dresses so popular on Jadenvale. Maybe no one would even notice she was pregnant.

 

Ava lifted her gaze from the swell of her stomach to meet her eyes in the mirror. She thought she looked anxious and worried, wide-eyed with bewilderment. It was kind of a permanent way of feeling these days, and she hated it. So she rolled it all up into a ball and tucked it into the back of her brain and decided to just go to dinner and fucking get it over with.

 

Jadenvale’s dining room was built on the same huge proportions as the rest of the palace. At first Ava had found it all a little overwhelming. Euphonia’s palaces were large but the rooms were cozy, low-ceilinged close dens that trapped precious heat inside. Jadenvale had no need for that, and so the ceiling rose far above Ava’s head, and the room stretched into what felt like the far distance, and there was a long dining table that could have fit dozens that was currently set for four.

 

Euphonia had large dining chambers, too, but she and Bennet never used them when it was just the two of them. That had seemed ridiculous. They had usually eaten in one of their private sitting rooms, on a fur by the fireplace, with very little formality. Ava still couldn’t make up her mind if dinner was always like this in this palace, or if this was just meant to impress the Euphonian visitors.

 

Queen Alexandra was the only person in the room, and she stood upon Ava’s entrance. She was dressed in the Jadenvale style of a flowing dress that glimmered gold in the candlelight and the last of the sunset spilling through the windows.

 

“Oh,” said Ava, and bowed low automatically. “Am I early?”

 

“No. You are on time. Everyone else is late. Sit, won’t you?”

 

Ava, after a moment of hesitation, sat. So did Alex.

 

A servant moved forward and offered Ava a glass of water with various fruits floating in it, and then another servant moved forward and offered her a plate of bread with whipped butter and oils. Ava took the plate, glancing over at Alex for guidance.

 

Alex had no such plate in front of her, so Ava waited.

 

Alex said, “Please, you needn’t wait on my account.”

 

And, because Ava was starving, she didn’t need any extra encouragement than that.

 

She dipped pieces of the bread in the Jadenvalian whipped butter—so much smoother than the Euphonian version—and the lightly flavored oils that tasted like warm sunshine, doing it carefully so as not to drip butter and oil all over her shirt. That was all she needed.

 

She ate slowly, because she thought it would look more dignified. Alex sat and watched her eat. It was so silent in the room that the sound of the servants breathing all around them sounded creepily roaring loud in Ava’s ears.

 

Ava reached the end of her piece of bread. Another servant stepped forward and placed a salad in front of her, crisp greens accented with other bright red vegetables seldom seen in Euphonia, with more of the sunlight-tasting oil on it. Ava looked at Alex, who still didn’t have any food in front of her.

 

Ava didn’t know if this was protocol or not. She did know that the silence was killing her, as was Alex’s steady, unwavering gaze on her, as if waiting for her to make a mistake.

 

She said desperately, “Are they usually this late, Alice and Archer?”

 

“Alice, almost never. I have no idea where she is. Archer comes to dinner when he chooses to, which isn’t all the time. I thought he might have nothing better to do now that your brother the King has returned to Euphonia. Apparently my optimism was misplaced.”

 

Ava was torn between feeling sorry for Alex, whose family didn’t show up to have dinner with her, and feeling sorry for herself because she’d told Alice she was coming to dinner and then Alice unexpectedly didn’t show up.

 

So she addressed her most obvious source of discomfort first. “Won’t you eat with me? I don’t know what the protocol is, but…” Ava gestured at her salad.

 

Alex smiled faintly. “I am not especially hungry tonight.”

 

“You’re not feeling well?” said Ava, sympathetic, because did she ever know, thanks to her _lovely_ but really rather headstrong baby, what “not feeling well” was like.

 

“No, I’m fine,” Alex replied.

 

“Ah,” said Ava. “So you’re saying that it’s not unusual for you to feel unwell. You feel unwell so often that you interpret it as feeling ‘fine.’”

 

“I _am_ feeling fine,” said Alex.

 

Ava studied Alex’s face closely. It was a pretty face, with an endearing scattering of the freckles so common among the Euphonians, with blue eyes that were very bright and intelligent, with hair that Ava knew was lovely. But Alex kept her hair piled away behind her, and Alex had a mouth that Ava knew didn’t smile enough, wasn’t nearly expressive enough, was schooled to show nothing behind the attractive façade. “I think you’re not,” said Ava simply, and pushed her salad away. “You know what I could go for? Some of that fried fish you have here, Bennet raved about it.”

 

“You’ll have to go down to the town—” began Alex.

 

“ _We’ll_ have to go down to the town,” interrupted Ava, and smiled.

 

Alex’s face, frequently so impassive, expressed astonishment now. “I can’t go down to the town.”

 

“Why not?”

 

“I’ll be recognized.”

 

“Not if you go incognito. Come now, you must have a go-to disguise.”

 

Alex was frowning slightly now, the exact opposite of the smile Ava had hoped to coax out of her. “I don’t smuggle myself down to the town.”

 

Ava lifted her eyebrows skeptically. “You don’t? Archer clearly does it all the time.”

 

“Archer is anything but incognito in town. Archer is constantly recognized. Archer underestimates his memorability.”

 

“He does at that,” agreed Ava. “Well, that settles it.” Ava pushed her chair back to stand.

 

Alex looked up at her in astonishment. “What settles what?”

 

“You’re going to let your hair down, and wear some of my Euphonian clothes, and go incognito with me into town to get some fried fish.”

 

“No, I’m not,” said Alex. “That plan is crazy.”

 

Ava smiled.


	21. Chapter 21

“What are you doing?” Alice asked Archer curiously, from the terrace outside her bedroom where she was reclining.

 

Archer was running circles around the palace’s terrace, hoping to tire himself out enough to sleep without Bennet in the bed.

 

“Nothing,” he panted, and collapsed down onto the quilt Alice had pulled outside with her. “What are _you_ doing?”

 

“Star gazing.” Alice looked back up at the stars. “Are the stars different in Euphonia?”

 

“Yes,” said Archer. “Slightly. Different viewing angle, I think.”

 

“All a matter of perspective,” said Alice.

 

Which was a strange thing for her to say, and said in a strange tone. Archer looked at her curiously. “You okay?”

 

“I slept through dinner,” Alice said. “Everyone kept saying how tired I looked, so I figured I’d take a nap, and I slept through dinner.”

 

“Do you want me to have them bring up some food for you?” asked Archer, confused.

 

“No,” Alice said. “I’m fine. I’m just giving you my excuse for why I wasn’t there to mediate between Alex and Ava. Did Ava behave too outrageously for Alex’s taste?”

 

“Alex and Ava?” Archer echoed. “What are you talking about?”

 

Alice gave up looking at the stars, turning her head to look at Archer. “Didn’t Ava go to dinner tonight?”

 

“I don’t know. Maybe. _I_ didn’t go to dinner tonight.”

 

“Oh, no.” Alice sat up. “So no one was there to smooth things over?”

 

“You know that doesn’t always have to be your job. I’m sure Ava and Alex can get through a dinner together.”

 

“It’s your wedding that’s going to be jeopardized if Alex decides to hate Ava,” snapped Alice.

 

Archer had been idly looking at the stars, but now he focused on Alice. “Nothing is fucking jeopardizing my wedding,” he said flatly. “ _Nothing_. I don’t give a fuck how Alex feels about Ava. That’s entirely irrelevant to the subject of my wedding.”

 

“What is it like to be you?” asked Alice, and Archer couldn’t guess at her tone. Resentment? Wistfulness? Bafflement?

 

“What does that mean?” was all he could think of to say in response, because he needed some fucking clarification.

 

“You know what you want and you go and you get it. What’s that like?”

 

“That isn’t what I’m like,” said Archer quizzically. “That is the _opposite_ of what I’m like. I’m terrible at getting what I want.”

 

“You’re getting Bennet,” Alice pointed out.

 

“Yes,” Archer agreed. “But that’s because…” Archer didn’t know how to explain it. “Bennet is a special circumstance.”

 

“I think Bennet is the first time in your life you ever saw something you wanted, and then you went out and got him.”

 

Maybe that was true, Archer thought. But he was more concerned with how envious Alice sounded.

 

He said, “It wasn’t easy, you know. It’s still not. It was fucking difficult. But it turns out, trite as it sounds, that it really is worth fighting for something you really want.”

 

“Oh,” said Alice, “I know _that_. That’s not what I need you to explain to me.”

 

“What do you need me to explain to you?” asked Archer.

 

“How did you figure out that you wanted Bennet in the first place? How did you _know_?”

 

Alice was looking at him very somberly, so Archer took a second to answer, carefully considering his advice. Then he said slowly, “I could no longer imagine my life without him. But…No, that’s not true. I could no longer imagine my life without _me_. The me he made me feel like. It felt like meeting myself for the first time, and I don’t want to go back to before.”

 

“Do you worry you’ll lose it again? Being without him now?”

 

She asked it so inquisitively, so innocently, that Archer didn’t feel afraid or offended. He said, “No. It turns out it feels…natural to me, this skin. I feel the friction when I fight against it. I miss him, but I don’t miss him because I’m worried I’ll lose myself. I miss him because…I just miss him.”

 

There was a long moment of silence.

 

Then Alice curled her hand into Archer’s and squeezed. “I’m sorry you’re without him now. And I’m sorry it was a bit of a battle to get the treaty hammered out. But I’m glad you found yourself. We really only ever wanted that for you, even if we had no idea how to do it for you.”

 

“And now maybe you and Alex should work on finding yourselves,” suggested Archer. Because he thought that was a lot of the problem, that Alex and Alice were so completely lost that they didn’t understand the way he was acting now that he felt found. And he had somehow managed to shockingly upend palace life just by being _happy_. He didn’t want being happy to be so unusual.

 

“I wouldn’t even know where to start,” confessed Alice, her voice small.

 

Archer considered, then said, “Probably at the beginning. It’s generally better to start at the beginning than in the middle.”

 

Alice choked laughter and shoved Archer a little bit. “Helpful,” she said.

 

“I can’t help it if I’m right,” replied Archer lightly. “But beware: sometimes beginnings are called The End.”


	22. Chapter 22

“This is ridiculous,” Alex hissed, as Ava led her down the winding road that led from the palace to the town. Led her _by the hand_. Her hand tight in Alex’s, guiding the way, as if this wasn’t _Alex’s literal country_. “This is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever done,” Alex clarified, pretending she wasn’t staring at their joined hands as she was tugged along in Ava’s determined wake.

 

“Alex. It’s going into town. If _this_ is the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever done, I’m a little sad for you,” said Ava simply, as if…as if…as if it really was sad that Alex had been a responsible Queen for the entirety of her adult life.

 

Alex pointed that out. “I’m the Queen. I’m not allowed to do ridiculous things.”

 

Ava shook her head and stopped walking momentarily, turning to look at Alex. “You’re not always the Queen. You’re not entirely the Queen.”

 

They were standing very close together. Behind Ava, moonlight glinted off the ripples of the bay and turned the crests of Ava’s curls silver, like whitecaps on a stormy sea. It was an amazing effect. Striking. Alex wanted to gather handfuls of Ava’s curls, wondering if it felt as silky as it looked. They hadn’t even reached the town yet and already this night was amazing, thought Alex.

 

She said, a little more breathlessly than she’d intended, “I am. The Queen. Always. Entirely.”

 

Ava shook her head again and pressed her hand to Alex’s chest, on the curve of her breast, right above where Alex’s heart beat wildly. Alex stood very still, wondering if she was supposed to have some sort of reaction, completely unable to have any sort of reaction other than frozen shock.

 

Ava said, “There’s a part of you, inside here, curled next to the beat of your heart, that isn’t. It’s the part of you that worries so much about Archer and Alice. It’s the part of you that looks back in the mirror when you finally let your hair down. It’s the part of you that wonders how life could have been different, and what that would have been like. It’s the part of you that needs to know that you _are_ something without the crown on your head, that you don’t wink out of existence once you set foot from the palace. Every royal needs that part. Every royal needs a night like this.”

 

Alex was breathing so rapidly, you would have thought she’d swum a hundred laps. Ava was so devastatingly lovely in the moonlight, and her hand was still resting over Alex’s heart, and her dark eyes gleamed, and Alex gasped for breath and just stared at Ava and tried to fix this moment in her memory forever, this wild tangled unpredictable moment that felt like it was see-sawing over the edge of a cliff, with the sea far below.

 

Ava flashed a smile, teeth white in the darkness, and said, “Let’s go have a night together. Trust me.”

 

Alex felt herself tipping inexorably over the edge of the cliff. _Trust Ava_. It seemed like the most natural thing in the world.

 

Maybe, Alex thought, the sea below wasn’t stormy after all, but warm and welcoming.


	23. Chapter 23

Ava didn’t know the town well. She’d stuck to the palace since being in Jadenvale. It was odd, she was endlessly reckless and adventurous in Euphonia, she had never followed a rule that would have confined her, but released from the constant burden of being the Only Princess, Ava had suddenly found her need for rebellion had faded. She was content to lay in the sun and read and maybe try to learn to swim every so often.

 

Maybe it was Jadenvale. Maybe it was the pregnancy. Whatever it was, Ava had rarely been into town. And Alex had apparently never been to town at all. So Ava stopped at the first place she saw offering fried fish. The aroma was _intoxicating_. No wonder Bennet had been over the moon about the frying technique, determined to find a way to bring it to Euphonia.

 

Ava’s mouth was watering. She said, “Here we are.”

 

“Where?” Alex asked.

 

Ava glanced at her. She looked incredibly beautiful, with her red hair slinking down her back, and in unusual and daring Euphonian clothes borrowed from Ava. Queen Alexandra of Jadenvale was striking, Ava thought. No wonder she tried to play that down when she was trying to be taken seriously as queen.

 

And she was looking in amazement at the town around her, trying to take it all in. It was a busy time, as the restaurants were shifting more toward the drinkers and the dancers than the general population. And this was a big city: there were a lot of drinkers and dancers to gape at.

 

“Dinner,” said Ava. “This is where we’re eating dinner. Close your mouth.” Ava said it fondly, leaning over to tap Alex’s chin up to close her mouth.

 

Alex said nothing. She kept her mouth closed and followed Ava’s lead and they settled at a table together. Ava ordered food for them and the waitress didn’t even blink at Alex. People were sending glances their way but Ava was pretty sure they were admiring looks at an attractive woman, not curiosity about their queen; Ava had a lot of experience telling the difference.

 

And she felt vindicated when the waitress brought their food with a drink.

 

“Compliments of the gentleman over there,” said the waitress, and waved vaguely.

 

It could have been any gentleman over there. There were a number of them, and none of them was waving at them in any obvious way.

 

Alex blinked uncomprehendingly at the drink, which was glowing slightly in the glass.

 

“Ooh,” said Ava, as the waitress moved away. She leaned forward to study the drink. “What is it?”

 

“Starlight,” said Alex dazedly. “What do you think it means?”

 

“What it means?” echoed Ava. “It means some guy over there thinks you’re hot. Which you are.”

 

“You don’t think he sent it because he recognized me?” Alex asked anxiously.

 

“Alex, trust me, no one’s going to recognize you right now. You don’t look at all like a queen. You look like an extraordinarily beautiful woman who is out on the town, ready to be flirted with.”

 

“But I don’t know how to… _flirt_ ,” said Alex blankly. “Should I send a drink back to him?”

 

Ava smiled. “You should take your drink and enjoy it. You should have some food with me. You should soak in the atmosphere and enjoy being beautiful and young.”

 

Alex looked across at her. “Is that what you used to do? In Euphonia?”

 

“Kind of,” said Ava, and then confessed, because the utter naked honesty Ava sensed so frequently in Alex, so raw and fretful, made Ava want to be just as honest in return, “Not well enough. I don’t even know half the time if I was having fun when I was hanging out incognito in Euphonia.”

 

“Then why were you doing it?” asked Alex. She was eating her fried fish absently, with her hands, eyes steady on Ava.

 

It was flattering, Ava thought, even in these circumstances, to have the most beautiful woman in the room so focused on you. And a woman who seemed to really want to _know_ about you, to understand you. Ava hadn’t met a whole lot of people like that. Ava said, “I don’t really know.” She considered thoughtfully, still striving to be as honest as possible. “I think I was doing it because I didn’t know what else to do.”

 

“You could have stayed in the palace,” suggested Alex.

 

Ava laughed. Because that idea _was_ laughable. When Alex frowned in reaction, she explained hastily, “That didn’t work for me. I know you’re suggesting that because you think it worked for you, but I needed to get out. I felt trapped in the walls. I didn’t know where I was going but I knew it wasn’t there.”

 

After a second Alex admitted, “I think it’s how Archer felt, too.”

 

“I think it’s how we all feel. It’s just that some of us royals are less able to suppress it. But you came to town incognito and look at that: suddenly you’re eating.” Ava looked pointedly at the plate of fried fish, now empty because Alex had devoured it.

 

Alex looked surprised to find an empty plate in front of her. “Oh,” she said. “I guess I _was_ hungry.”

 

Ava smiled and ordered them another round.

 

Alex said, “So if you’re not even sure you liked going out incognito, why are we doing it now?”

 

“Because,” said Ava simply, “I suspect the reason I didn’t like it wasn’t so much the activity itself, but the fact that I never got to do it with the right person.”


	24. Chapter 24

“The look on his _face_ ,” said Ava, laughing breathlessly, barely able to stay upright in her amusement.

 

“But, I mean, _really_ ,” gasped Alex, who was not doing much better, staggering a little on the uneven path up to the palace, leaning heavily against the walls lining it. “Why would he think that he ought to woo me by telling me about the mating habits of hummerfish?”

 

“Well, he wasn’t trying to _woo_ you,” Ava replied, and then burst into renewed giggles. “ _Woo_ you. You’re so silly. As if he was offering his hand in marriage. As if—you would have to—write a wedding treaty—with _him_.” Ava dissolved into laughter again.

 

“Well, if he wasn’t trying to woo me, what was the point?” asked Alex.

 

“Oh, _Alex_ ,” said Ava, and shook her head as they walked, still bubbling laughter.

 

“Well, it wasn’t sexy,” said Alex. “Was it supposed to be sexy? The mating habits of hummerfish? They sneeze into their partners’ gills, it’s not attractive.”

 

“When you think about it, neither is sex,” remarked Ava.

 

Alex had never thought about it. Sex wasn’t generally something she spent a lot of time thinking about.

 

But she found herself looking at Ava in the moonlight and thinking, _Talk to me more about your thoughts on sex_.

 

“Anyway,” Ava continued, as if Alex wasn’t completely suspended in thought next to her, “men are frequently not very good at gauging what’s sexy.”

 

“Do you miss the baby’s father?” Alex blurted out, and then was horrified with herself, that was _completely_ uncalled-for, what was _wrong_ with her.

 

Ava stopped walking and looked over at Alex, mouth open in what was clearly shock. “What?” she said.

 

“Never mind,” Alex said quickly. “Forget I said it. I’ve…had too much starlight, I—”

 

“It wasn’t that kind of relationship,” Ava said, and she said it simply, without any pain or remorse in her voice. “It wasn’t any kind of relationship. We knew each other, but I am not entirely sure we even _liked_ each other. He didn’t want a baby.”

 

“And you did?”

 

“No,” Ava said. “But I thought…” Ava was silent for so long that Alex didn’t think she was going to continue. Alex was about to suggest they continue back up to the palace. “I thought of the role fate had played in my life, all along: that I was a born a princess; that I was born second; that my parents died when I was so young; that my older brother turned out to be Bennet. All of the little twists of fate that have made me me. There are some of them I wouldn’t want for myself, like losing my parents, but when all is said and done…” Ava took a deep breath and met Alex’s gaze with a steely determination that Alex could see even in the feeble moonlight. “When all is said and done, I don’t think I’ve turned out that badly. I think that I like me. And I wanted it to be okay for me to like me with all of my twists of fate. This baby was another one, and so I decided to embrace this twist, too. See what it made of me.”

 

“What’s it made of you?” asked Alex, fascinated, transfixed. She could stand there forever in the moonlight and listen to Ava talk, in her clipped Euphonian syllables, with stubbornness in her tone.

 

“I don’t know yet. But I do know that it caused Bennet to call in Archer, and look what happened there. So maybe this twist of fate, so far, was to bring Bennet and Archer together. And I am more than okay with that. It’s a good thing in this world that exists because of me.”

 

“And then there’ll be the baby,” Alex said. “Another good thing.”

 

“Yeah,” said Ava reflectively, and rubbed her hands over the soft swell of her stomach. “I certainly hope so.”

 

Alex wanted to kiss her. But the thing was: Alex didn’t know the proper protocol for a kiss. Should she make a formal request first? Would Euphonians expect a low bow in advance of the formal kiss request?

 

And while she was standing there, frozen, trying to decide, a voice called out, “Halt and present yourselves!”

 

Alex looked up, startled, at the guard that had appeared a short distance away from them.

 

The palace guard, she thought. This would, of course, be the one night when they would actually be _vigilant_.

 

“It’s me,” Alex said wearily. “The Queen. Don’t you recognize me?”

 

The guard actually looked uncertain about this.

 

“Pull your hair back, Alex,” Ava suggested.

 

Alex sighed and gathered it up into her hands, twisting it up behind her. The weight of it seemed to jolt her back into reality. She’d had this magical evening playing dress-up with Ava but now it was time to go back to the real world.

 

And in the real world, queens didn’t kiss princesses with whom they barely had an acquaintance. It just wasn’t done.

 

The guard, recognizing Alex, stammered, “S-sorry, your Majesty.”

 

“No matter,” Alex said, suddenly exhausted. “We’re coming in now.” She turned to Ava. “I want to thank you for a very lovely evening.”

 

“Right,” said Ava. “Of course. I am always up for an evening like that.”

 

“Good night,” said Alex, and she could hear her voice drop back into the regal tone, injecting distance into the interaction. Alex felt like the starlight she’d drunk could have happened in a totally different lifetime, or a half-remembered dream.

 

“Good night,” said Ava, after a very long moment.

 

But by that time Alex was already walking back into the palace.


	25. Chapter 25

Bennet returned to a palace in utter turmoil.

 

Which served to bring Bennet harshly back to the reality that he’d left abruptly and with almost no explanation. And had fired Massimo on his way out, which had done little to soothe the situation.

 

So his homecoming was full of people bowing low to him and striving not to insult him while being really rather furious with them.

 

He didn’t blame them.

 

Lacking Massimo, he plucked one of his other advisers out of relative obscurity, inviting her into his private chambers, where a servant was hurriedly trying to stoke a fire into existence to chase away the chill. Petra, the adviser, tried not to look completely overwhelmed by the experience.

 

Bennet sat and took off his boots and longed for a very hot bath and a lovely long sleep in his own bed but instead said to Petra, “I need to speak to the council—”

 

“Begging your pardon, Excellence,” said Petra, bowing low, “but they’re already assembled.”

 

“Really?” said Bennet. “That was marvelously punctual of them.”

 

“Begging your pardon, Excellence,” said Petra, “but they’ve been assembled since yesterday. There was some concern, when you left without giving instructions, and Massimo implied…” Petra trailed off delicately.

 

Bennet could imagine what Massimo had implied. He also knew that, well, it wouldn’t entirely be undeserved, given the circumstances.

 

Bennet said, “I’ll speak to the council. While that’s happening, can you have all members of the household rounded up? I will address them as well.” He figured that was the best way to defuse whatever rumors had erupted during his silent absence.

 

Petra bowed low and left the chambers. Bennet went through his sitting room into his bedroom and took out his royal cloak and swept it around his shoulders. Then he settled his crown on his head. Then he looked at his reflection in the mirror— _King David_ —and then, treaty tucked firmly in his pocket, he walked briskly to the council room, letting his cloak stream out behind him.

 

When he arrived in the council room, all of the animated conversation that had been occurring ceased immediately.

 

Bennet said pleasantly, “Good afternoon,” and went to stand at the head of the table. “My apologies for my sudden absence and subsequent lack of communication. I was, you see, negotiating a marriage treaty.”

 

“We assumed that the situation had something to do with Princess Ava,” said one of his advisers sympathetically.

 

“Not a marriage treaty for Princess Ava,” said Bennet, unrolling the treaty onto the table. “A marriage treaty for me.”

 

There was a long moment of silence.

 

Finally a council member said, “For you, Excellence?”

 

“There has been a change of plans. I am substituting myself for Princess Ava. I will marry Prince Archer of Jadenvale.”

 

All eyes stared at him.

 

“A straight substitution?” one council member asked finally.

 

Bennet smiled. He had anticipated the question; he had planned his sales pitch on his way over the Graveyard, slowly trying it out mentally and then revising it and then committing it to memory in his head. Archer would have been annoyed, Bennet knew, over the necessity of having to sell the Euphonian council on their marriage, but Bennet was practical that way. This didn’t bother him; this was something he had to do to get what he wanted. And there was nothing he wasn’t willing— _eager_ —to do, to get Archer.

 

Bennet said, “Not a straight substitution. It is a much better deal for Euphonia. Formal recognition of Euphonian rights in the no-man’s-land in the western mountains, and an additional several acres of land bordering The End. The land will officially be Prince Archer’s, but his affection for Euphonia is great and it will be used for the benefit of the kingdom as a whole. Jadenvale is our nearest neighbor. This is an alliance that will secure peace and increase prosperity for Euphonia. It will cement improved relations between the two kingdoms. It is my hope that the populations move more freely between the two, learning from each other, growing stronger and more stable together.”

 

Bennet looked at his council, all of which were now crowded together poring over the words of the treaty, confirming what he was saying.

 

Finally one of them looked up at him, peering at him over the top of her spectacles, and said, “It is as you say. We live in uncertain times in Euphonia, given the state of the glacier. Improved relations with Jadenvale might be vital to our continued survival. It makes sense to bind yourself to the Jadenvalian royal family instead of Princess Ava, but it makes sense the other way, too: Why settle for the Only Prince? Why is this treaty not in exchange for Queen Alexandra?”

 

“Queen Alexandra has her own kingdom to run. She will never relinquish it to me. And Euphonia deserves a consort devoted to it, as Prince Archer is.”

 

“Why not Princess Alice, then?” asked another council member shrewdly.

 

Another question Bennet had expected and had prepared an answer to. “We discussed this when we discussed sending for Prince Archer to comply with the previous treaty regarding Princess Ava. The Only Prince is a scientist who is dedicated to discovering the cause for the glacier melt. It will be much easier to have him here, as consort, devoted to the problem.”

 

“No doubt,” said another council member. “But what of the succession? Do you plan to divorce Prince Archer once he gets to the bottom of the glacier conundrum? How would Queen Alexandra react to that?”

 

“There will be no divorce,” Bennet replied shortly. “Prince Archer will be my consort, my partner in ruling. It is a union of two lives.”

 

“Then Linnea’s question still stands,” said the council member with the spectacles. “What of the succession?”

 

“For that,” said Bennet smoothly, “there is Princess Ava.”


	26. Chapter 26

The library of Jadenvale was extremely thin when it came to subjects touching upon cold climates. There were a few volumes about Euphonia generally, that mentioned its harsh weather almost in passing, and there were a few other volumes about meteorological phenomena, but glaciers were discussed only glancingly, with certainly no explanation of what would cause one to melt.

 

Well, water melted when the temperature increased, Archer knew. Maybe it was possible that Euphonia was simply getting warmer. He would have to conduct experiments.

 

He made a note on the piece of paper next to him, a half-drafted letter to Bennet that was mostly reminding Archer to ask Bennet if the data he’d requested was still being gathered. He had included data on air temperature, but now he wondered if historical data existed. Had anyone before him bothered to study such a thing? He had little understanding how advanced Euphonia might be scientifically. He hadn’t had time to ask yet. Now that there was a marriage treaty and food ordered for an engagement ball and wedding invitations sent out, Archer felt somewhat more able to focus on things other than the fear that Bennet would somehow be taken from him.

 

“Sir,” said Trix, coming in with an enormous pile of papers.

 

“Fuck, what are those?” asked Archer, in dread.

 

“Roderick was looking for you to give you these. I intercepted him.”

 

“Thank you,” said Archer, poking at the pile of papers like it might bite him. “But these still look horrible.”

 

“Actually,” said Trix with a smile, “I think you’re going to like these. You have to choose a wedding outfit. These are proposals from the best of the Jadenvalian tailors.”

 

Archer pulled the pile of papers to him and gave it a proper look. Trix was right: there were piles of sketches of really gorgeous clothes.

 

Yes, there was also other kind of annoying things about the guest list and seating charts and whether they ought to add a breakfast to the celebrations and things of that nature, but there were _suit proposals_ , and Archer might not be very good at the rest of the diplomacy involved in his complicated wedding but he knew that he knew clothes.

 

“Oh,” he said casually. “I suppose I’ll look through these portfolios.”

 

Trix didn’t look fooled by his attempt at indifference for a second. “Try not to have too much fun, sir,” she said as she ducked out of the library.

 

“Cheeky,” muttered Archer, turning the pages of his pile of papers.

 

“Oh,” said Alex. “Am I interrupting wedding planning?”

 

Archer looked up in surprise. Alex, once again in the library, once again looking uncertain about a conversation, with _him_. “No,” he said. “Not really. I mean…” Why would Alex seek him out _again_? Archer was bewildered. Were they just suddenly going to start _talking_ to each other now? “Did you want something?” he asked, just to cut to the chase.

 

“Quite right,” Alex said, nodding. “To the point.”

 

But then Alex didn’t say anything else.

 

Archer lifted his eyebrows.

 

Eventually Alex said, “Your first kiss with King David. How did that go?”

 

“How did it _go_?” Archer couldn’t quite believe he’d heard the question properly.

 

“Yes. Who kissed whom? Was permission requested first? Did he insist that you bow low before kissing him? What are the proper protocols for such a thing?”

 

Archer stared at him. Then he said, “What are the proper protocols for a _first kiss_?”

 

“When royals are involved,” clarified Alex. “I understand it’s probably different for commoners. Probably much easier.”

 

Archer considered how to respond to the question. Then he said, “There weren’t protocols. We weren’t royals, at that moment. We were Bennet and Archer. That’s what I keep trying to get across to you, when you’re so concerned about negotiations and treaties and _protocols_ : We’re not King David and Prince Archer. Not in this. You persist in thinking there’s something unique about this situation because we’re royal. But there’s not. That’s what makes things between us so good. We’re not royals. We’re just people. And he needs that. He needs someone like me just looking at him like a person. And I need someone like him just looking at me like a person. I _need_ that, Alex.” Archer paused, then said carefully, “And I think you do, too. I think you probably need it kind of desperately.”

 

And Alex, instead of taking offense as Archer half-expected her to do, just said thoughtfully, “Yes. Maybe. You might be right,” and then drifted out of the library.

 

“What is even happening around here?” Archer mumbled, and then added the odd little vignette to his latest letter to Bennet.


	27. Chapter 27

Bennet spoke to his assembled household, announced his engagement, explained that he would be returning to Jadenvale with a large retinue for a royal wedding, and that then Prince Archer would be returning back to Euphonia with him.

 

The household seemed delighted, pleased for him, maybe relieved to have the resolution for the recent upheaval be so unalarming.

 

Of course afterward, as the palace fell into a busy buzz of preparation for the wedding excursion, there were a million details to worry about. Bennet, in the letter he drafted to Archer in between fielding questions about dress code and the types of food likely to be served and whether pets were allowed to attend the wedding, noted that he definitely didn’t envy Archer the even more intense side of wedding planning.

 

Bennet had just collapsed backward onto his bed, considering if he even had the energy to call for a bath, when there was a cursory knock on the door.

 

“Fucking fuck,” Bennet mumbled into the arm he’d thrown over his face, then put his arm down and called out wearily, “Come in,” pushing himself up onto his elbows.

 

It was Petra, who bowed low and said, “Begging your pardon, Excellence, but I did not have the opportunity to truly congratulate you, as just myself, on your impending matrimony.”

 

“Thank you,” Bennet said, hoping that would be the end of it and Petra would leave.

 

Petra did not leave. “I know,” said Petra, “that I have not long been in a position of intimacy with Your Excellence, but I hope that I may be able to speak freely.”

 

Bennet tensed on the bed, bracing himself for some sort of attack on Archer’s character. “Of course,” he said, with forced lightness.

 

“Then I would like to say…that I think it is a good choice, both for the kingdom and for you personally. From what I knew of your parents, I believe they would approve. You were an adored son. They wished very much for you to be happy. I take it that you are?”

 

Bennet, in the face of unexpected support, felt completely undone. He stared at Petra and tried to think of something eloquent to say and really wanted to say, _Do you think so? Really? They wouldn’t be angry at me for being so self-indulgent?_ But instead settled on just managing to say, half-ashamed of how choked up he was, “Yes.” He didn’t have parents anymore to say they approved, though; this was the best he could get and it _meant_ something.

 

“Good.” Petra smiled slightly, then bowed low again. “Begging your pardon, Excellence, but where will you and the new Prince Consort honeymoon?”

 

“Honeymoon?” Bennet echoed blankly. He hadn’t even thought about it. What sort of horrible husband was he about to become? Archer was planning an _entire wedding_ , and he hadn’t thought about a single thing after the wedding happened.

 

“Yes. Would he prefer a tent on The Lake, perhaps? It would be very private and romantic.”

 

Bennet tried to imagine Archer in a tent on their honeymoon. Archer bundled up in furs and constantly freezing because his blood was unaccustomed to Euphonian weather. Bennet would do his best to keep him warm but it seemed like the opposite of the kind of honeymoon he wanted: Archer lazy and sated and curled against him and saying ridiculous things because Bennet adored Archer’s ridiculous things. That’s how he wanted Archer, not shivering and blue-lipped.

 

Bennet said slowly, “No. I don’t think so. I think I know what Archer would like.”

 

“Would you like me to arrange it for you?”

 

“No. I think I can do it. But there is one thing I’d like you to arrange for me.”


	28. Chapter 28

Archer made a decision on a wedding outfit for himself and a tentative one for Bennet, in case he didn’t have anything traditionally Euphonian he wanted instead. He made some decisions on food and declined to make any decisions on seating plans anywhere because he didn’t want to cause some fucking diplomatic kerfuffle.

 

There was a note in Rodrick’s file about music, and Archer thought how what he really wanted played was the Euphonian folk music he and Bennet had danced to that fateful night when Archer had let himself acknowledge how much his heart had decided on Bennet, even if there was much still to be settled about all of it. Archer thought that maybe Ava would know about the music and whether he could procure musicians who could play it.

 

And then Archer said out loud, in realization, “Ava.”

 

“What’s that, sir?” asked Trix, where she had been lounging in the adjacent library alcove.

 

Archer blinked in surprise. “I forgot you were there.”

 

“Here if you need me, sir. Did you want me to fetch Princess Ava?”

 

“No.” Archer picked himself up off the floor where he’d settled. “I’m going to find her myself. There’s something I need to discuss with her.”

 

Archer found Ava, typically, by the pool, basking in the sunlight, eyes obscured behind sunglasses.

 

She said, “Archer. Don’t even look at my enormous belly.”

 

So Archer immediately looked at it. “It’s not enormous.”

 

“Thank you,” said Ava brightly, taking her sunglasses off and beaming up at him. “I was fishing for compliments, you were very cooperative.”

 

“Did you kiss my sister?” Archer asked bluntly.

 

Ava blinked, looking startled by the question. “W-what?”

 

“My sister Alex, by the way, not Alice. I can understand if you’re confused by that, since I could have sworn your interest was in Alice.”

 

“My interest?” stammered Ava.

 

“And now you have Alex all in a dither and I may have had my disagreements with her but she is still my _sister_ and I’m a little worried you’re playing a game and Alex isn’t good at that sort of game.”

 

Ava gazed at him, wide-eyed, looking stunned. And then she crumpled. “Oh, no. What am I doing? I’ve made a mess. I just meant to make Alex have _fun_. I wanted her to have a good night. She doesn’t smile enough. None of you smile enough. I’ve been trying to make all of you smile. And now I’ve gone and…I don’t even _know_ what I’ve gone and done. But I didn’t kiss Alex. I _could_ have kissed Alex. I thought maybe Alex wanted to kiss me. And then I thought maybe she didn’t want to kiss me. And I wasn’t leading Alice on. Or I wasn’t trying to lead Alice on. I was just flirting. But I was just flirting with Alex, too. I just wanted to make them _smile_. And now I’ve made a mess. This is what I do. I always make a mess. Bennet’s going to kill me. Fuck, Archer, I—”

 

Archer had not intended to provoke this meltdown. “Okay.” Archer dragged a chair over and sat and grabbed one of Ava’s hands. “Stop it,” he said. “Take a deep breath.”

 

“Archer—”

 

Archer decided it was best to clarify this muddle with short declarative sentences. “You didn’t kiss Alex?”

 

“No,” answered Ava.

 

“You went out with her?”

 

“We went for fried seafood. Bennet raved about it. No one showed up to dinner but me, and Alex seemed so sad, and I just wanted to make her _smile_.”

 

“You keep saying that.”

 

“Because it’s _true_ ,” insisted Ava.

 

Archer sighed. “I know. We don’t smile enough. And then we meet people who make us smile…” Archer trailed off, and thought of Bennet, and wondered if Alex felt at all the way he felt about Bennet.

 

“I have Alex in a…dither?” said Ava.

 

Archer tipped a smile Ava’s way. “It’s an accomplishment. I’ve never seen her in a dither.”

 

Ava blinked tears away, and Archer leaned forward, murmuring, “Hey, hey, hey. Don’t. Bennet will fucking kill me for making you cry,” and brushed at her tears with the hand that wasn’t holding Ava’s.

 

“I’m a horrible person, Archer,” Ava said.

 

“No, you’re not.”

 

“You have wonderful sisters. Both of them. Alice hasn’t even begun to think about the things that she might want out of life, and she could have _everything_ , and it’s wondrous to see that begin to occur to her. And Alex is so stunning, Archer. I know she’s made life difficult for you but she’s trying so hard to be everything and I just wanted to make her _smile_. I didn’t mean to make her—I mean, not that I’m so arrogant that I think everyone who looks at me must fall in love with me, but I—I always do this. I always fuck everything up. And I wanted to stop that now. You mean everything in the world to Bennet and I don’t want to fuck up this life he’s going to need to navigate with your family in it.”

 

“I don’t mean everything in the world to Bennet. I sense that you mean something, too,” Archer pointed out.

 

“And I wanted to be better for the baby. Fuck, what sort of life is it going to be for this baby to have a mom who can’t stop fucking up _every single thing_?”

 

“Hey,” Archer said. “Stop it. That isn’t true about you.”

 

“Look at me, Archer. I mean, really look at me. I cause chaos everywhere I go. I’m going to do it to the baby, too.”

 

“Ava, sometimes chaos is exactly what life needs. And I think that about myself, too: that I don’t do anything right, that I’m rubbish at following all of the plethora of proper protocols. I went off to Euphonia and fell for its king and now he’s negotiating a treaty and hoping the council will approve it and—”

 

“That wasn’t a mistake,” Ava interrupted him fiercely.

 

“Neither is this baby.” Archer laid their joined hands firmly on the swell of her stomach, and Ava, finally, fell completely still, looking up at him with hope in her wide dark eyes.

 

“You don’t think so?”

 

“I think this baby is a miracle, Ava. Think about it: it’s something I’ll never get to experience, this flutter of life _right inside you_. Look at what you’re doing. You’re bringing us a new person to love, a new person that you and I, of all people, will know to smother in adoration and give the freedom to be whoever he or she wants to be.”

 

“He, she, it, they,” said Ava, sniffling. “I want her, him, it, them to be whatever they want. I want this baby to have _everything_. And you get that, don’t you?”

 

“Of course I get that, Ava. _Of course_ I do.”

 

Ava dislodged their hands, flung herself forward to hug Archer tightly. “I’m so glad I met you, Archer. I’m so glad you _exist_.”

 

“Likewise,” Archer said, and kissed her tumbled curls. “Honestly, likewise.”

 

“Even though I’ve…done whatever I’ve done with your sisters.”

 

“Maybe this palace could use a little more romantic intrigue.”

 

Ava laughed wetly.

 

Archer nudged Ava away gently and said, “You need to talk to Alex, though. I think she…I don’t know if she’s in love with you. I don’t know enough about Alex to…But you need to talk to her. And be kind to her, and be gentle, because she’s my sister and I love her even if I don’t understand her. But you’re my sister, too, now, and I love you, too, and I want you to both be happy. I don’t know if that’s with each other, I honestly don’t, and if it is or it isn’t, I’m fine either way, but you need to talk to her. Please.”

 

Ava sighed. “I know. Last night was…” Ava huffed out a breath. “Confusing. This is why I just make out with people you know. Leads to a lot less confusion.”

 

“If you say so,” said Archer indulgently, and kissed Ava’s forehead.


	29. Chapter 29

Ava felt a little sick to her stomach; she was trying to tell herself that was the baby.

 

Archer had told her where to find Alex, and while she was standing outside the door trying to get up courage to go in, Alex’s majordomo came out.

 

And looked her up and down as if he’d never seen her before and was finding her intensely wanting. “Was there something you wanted, Your Highness?” he asked, with the thinnest veneer of politeness.

 

Which made Ava want to do nothing more than irritate him, so she said jauntily, “I’m looking for Alex. She in there?” and then walked right through the door into the room.

 

So she supposed she should be grateful for rudeness giving her momentary courage.

 

Alex was sitting at the farthest end of the room, behind a desk, looking at a piece of paper with an adorable pair of spectacles perched on her nose. She looked up when Ava came in, and said only, “Ava.”

 

Ava couldn’t read her tone, so Ava said, instead of anything meaningful, “All of the rooms in this palace are so fucking enormous. You could play mettleball in here.”

 

“What’s mettleball?” asked Alex.

 

“It’s a game. Maybe we’ll play it at Archer and Bennet’s wedding.” Ava reached Alex’s desk, perched on it, looked down at her. “Hi,” she said, because she didn’t know what else to say.

 

“Hello,” said Alex cautiously.

 

“I love your spectacles,” said Ava.

 

Alex took them off immediately. “They’re embarrassing.”

 

Ava tipped her head quizzically. “Embarrassing? Why would they be embarrassing?”

 

“Because I’m the Queen. I shouldn’t have to—”

 

Ava shook her head. “What the fuck does wearing spectacles have to do with being the queen? Honestly, you monarchs are such enormous fucking messes.”

 

“So delighted I’m marrying my brother off to an enormous fucking mess,” said Alex drily.

 

“Archer’s going to straighten him out.”

 

“Is that what I need?” asked Alex. “Someone to straighten me out?”

 

Ava fell silent, looking down at Alex. And then she said, “I don’t want to be…I’d make a terrible consort. I’d make a terrible wife, for anyone. I don’t think it’s something I really want to do.”

 

“Had someone proposed marriage to you?” asked Alex evenly.

 

“I’m just saying,” persisted Ava, “that I would make you miserable. I know I would. I am unable to follow rules and you’re trying to run this perfect kingdom and eventually you’d stop finding it charming and just resent me. I’ve seen it happen with Bennet. He loves me—I know that he loves me—but I make him insane.”

 

There was a long moment of silence.

 

Then Alex stood. “I don’t necessarily agree with your assessment,” she said, taking a step closer to Ava. “I don’t think I would ever grow to resent you, just for being who you are, when who you are is so incredibly lovely.” She took another minute step closer, the gentle floating quality of her dress brushing up against Ava’s knees. “And I don’t just mean that you’re beautiful, although you obviously are exquisite. But you’re lovely inside. You have this…fierce loyalty, even to people who aren’t like you and who you can’t really understand. And I envy that. Because I’ve tried so hard to convey that to others, how much I care about them, and I’m so bad at it, but it just explodes off of you, the passion with which you fling yourself headlong into everything. I can’t see myself resenting that when I admire it so.”

 

Ava stared at her, with her hair shining bright copper in the light of the strong Jadenvalian sun behind her, winking off of the diamonds settled into it, and thought Alex was almost blinding in how amazing she was. “Alex,” she managed, which was very eloquent but the best she could do with Alex so close to her that Ava could smell the floral scent she wore.

 

“But I never said I was looking for a consort,” Alex went on. “As I understand it…” Alex trailed off, blue eyes searching Ava’s face, looking uncertain.

 

Ava licked her lips. “What?” she whispered.

 

“As I understand it, this doesn’t necessarily have to be about the rest of our lives, does it? This can be—can’t it—the one decision I get to make where the consequences don’t impact an entire kingdom but just…just you and me. Just Alex and Ava.” Alex licked her lips, too, a tiny darting-out of tongue that Ava focused on and wanted to chase, right back into Alex’s mouth. “Am I right?” Alex asked softly.

 

Ava closed her hands into the gauzy fabric of Alex’s dress, recognizing that it was impossibly soft, so soft it was almost liquid in her hands, and then pulled Alex forward the few scant inches she needed to.

 

And then Ava followed Alex’s tongue right into her mouth with her own tongue, and that—that was absolutely fucking glorious.

 

***

 

_Dear Bennet,_

 

_Things have been crazy here._

_I chose food for the wedding, and I chose outfits for us to wear. I don’t know if you have anything special you’d normally wear in Euphonia. Probably your cloak, but in addition to your cloak. Unless you just want to wear nothing but your cloak. No, wait, I don’t agree to that, you only get to wear nothing but your cloak with me. I don’t want the Ancient King of Sophophoph to be staring at your penis and rating it on a scale of 1 to 10 or some fucking thing. So you have to cover your penis for our wedding, it’s non-negotiable._

 

_Ava and Alex may be an item at the moment. I had a nice talk with Ava about the whole thing. She just wants to make my sister smile, and I agree with that, so I am being supportive. I want them both happy, and I am hoping they don’t break each other’s hearts. I think it’s possible they might not. It’s odd, because I’ve spent most of my life fighting with Alex, but I find this weird protective streak coming out in me. I want her to have a life where she’s not a queen. Do you think you have a life where you’re not a king? I hope you feel that you do, now, because it’s how I want you to feel._

_You can see that Ava’s pregnant now. It’s the tiniest little bump of her belly, and inside of there is another human life growing. Isn’t that amazing? I have considered myself a quasi-scientist for as long as I could understand my affinity for those books, and I never really gave much thought to the act of giving life, because it wasn’t one I was ever going to get to do. And I didn’t think that actually bothered me—I didn’t think I cared—but I looked at Ava today, with life inside her, and I envied her. I would love to know what that feels like, I would love to bring a child into the world, to be responsible for a life and all of the astonishment that life could bring with it. _

_I would love to bring our child into the world. What do you think our child would look like? I find myself wondering about this. My freckles, or your darker skin? My dark eyes, or your blue ones? My brown hair, or your black hair? Or something entirely different I can’t dream up? It’s foolish of me to be thinking about this at all, because it’s impossible, and I don’t know why I’m_

_Do you regret it? The fact that being with me—choosing me—means you will never have a child? Have you given it thought? Having a child was never really an option for me, with the way that I feel, but I think it does sadden me. Is that strange? It seems absurd to me. So selfish of me. I am getting more happiness than I ever thought I would, I am getting you, and it isn’t that I want more, it isn’t that I’m not happy, because I am, I just think we would have an amazing child, you and I. _

_Ignore everything about this letter. Not like I’m ever going to show it to you anyway. But this one is even worse than the others. I am going downhill here. You need to come back here immediately. I am tired of all of this and I want you. I just want to wake up and have you here. What are you doing in Euphonia??????????_

 

The knock came on the door just as Archer had flung himself onto his bed sulkily, annoyed with everything in the universe because Bennet wasn’t there and he was stuck writing increasingly maudlin letters by himself.

 

Archer sat up, trying not to hope, because it was totally impractical, but still, he couldn’t help the leap in his heart that maybe Bennet was about to walk through that door.

 

“Come in,” he called, tousling his hair a little bit so that it would be that much more irresistible just in case it _was_ Bennet.

 

It wasn’t Bennet.

 

It was a palace guard who handed across a piece of paper. “This just came for you, Your Highness.”

 

It was sealed with the midnight blue wax of the Euphonian royal family, a single star stamped onto it. Archer said, as casually as he could while his heart jumped around in his chest, “Thank you,” and somehow managed to wait for the guard to leave before he tore the paper open.

 

_Archer, my Eminence – Treaty signed. Have the officiant ready and waiting. On my way to you now. All my love –B._

 

***

 

Alex was surprised when Alice walked into dinner.

 

It must have showed in her tone when she said, “Alice,” because Alice said, “You sound shocked.”

 

“Well, you didn’t come to dinner last night,” Alex pointed out, trying to sound reasonable and not terribly disappointed because she’d hoped to have Ava to herself. _Come to dinner_ , she’d said breathlessly, Ava’s lips on her throat, _and after dinner we can—_ and Ava had chuckled and nipped at Alex’s earlobe and said, _You don’t even mean it euphemistically, you mean actual dinner_ , which had bewildered Alex, as if dinner could be _skipped_ , and when she had said as much to Ava, Ava had laughed and then kissed her and kissed her until Alex was trembling against her.

 

So _of course_ Alice would show up to dinner, thought Alex, and hoped she was keeping a sour look off of her face.

 

Alice sighed as she sat down. “I know. I’m sorry. I slept through it. I felt horrible for it later. Did you manage to deal with Ava okay?”

 

Alex blinked at Alice and tried to figure out how to describe how she had managed to deal with Ava. _The swipe of Ava’s tongue…the pluck of Ava’s fingers…_

 

“Ava,” said Alice.

 

Alex blinked from Alice to Ava, who had apparently just entered the room. She was dressed in the Euphonian trousers she always wore, in a white shirt with a daring amount of décolletage showing, with her heavy black curls streaming down her back. She looked ravishing.

 

And maybe as surprised to see Alice as Alex had been.

 

“Alice,” she said. “Hello.” Then she bowed low in Alex’s direction. “Your Majesty.”

 

“Please sit,” Alex said, striving to be as formal and queenly as she normally was automatically. Ava was throwing her entirely off.

 

And far from being annoyed by that, Alex was thrilled by it. It was a thrill she felt all the way to her fingertips, which itched to touch Ava. It was the most delicious secret, the knowledge that there was Ava, sitting beside her, giving every impression of demure, when later that night she would be—

 

“Everyone!” shouted Archer, as he rushed into the room. He was out-of-breath, his hair completely disheveled, his clothes flyaway.

 

Alex lifted her eyebrows at him. “Is something the matter?”

 

“Bennet’s on his way.” Archer brandished a piece of paper over his head. “Bennet’s _on his way_. So he should be here by when? Tomorrow night at the latest?”

 

“He’d be moving quickly for that,” remarked Alex.

 

“He’ll be moving quickly. So we will have the engagement ball the night after tomorrow. I want it written in stone. That’s when it’s happening. With the wedding the day after.”

 

“But the guests—” began Alex.

 

“The guests will be here or they will not be here, I don’t give a fuck. I want to be married already.”

 

“You would think we’d made you wait years for him,” noted Alex, exasperated. “You’ve only been engaged a handful of days.”

 

“Let him have his sense of urgency,” said Ava playfully, smiling at Archer. “Let Archer and Bennet rush headlong into this.” Ava turned her bright eyes on Alex. “It’s such fun sometimes. Trust me.”

 

And Alex, in the face of Ava and the promise in her eyes—Alex let herself relax.

 

***

 

There was starlight on the Bay of Thaddeus, and Alex stood staring down at it, at the way it silvered the rippling waves. In the distance was the sound of waves against the shore, and the air smelled of the jasmine ringed around the terraces, in the pots Alice tended so carefully.

 

And behind Alex, in the room she had lived in all her life, in the room she never expected to leave, there was a knock on the door.

 

“Come in,” Alex called, not turning away from the sight of the bay below her.

 

“You have arranged yourself spectacularly,” Ava said from behind her. “I’d you say you ought to have your portrait painted like that, but no one would ever be able to look directly at it. It would be too beautiful to be subjected to the tawdry gazes of all.”

 

Alex chuckled.

 

Ava leaned up against the terrace next to her, looked down at the bay below them. “It’s beautiful,” she said.

 

“It is.”

 

“It suits you, this place. It’s appropriate it should have such a stunning queen.”

 

“I feel sometimes like I should resent it,” Alex admitted. “This heavy weight around my neck, this burden I must carry everywhere I go. I get the sense that your brother resents it.”

 

“He loves Euphonia. But he does chafe against it.”

 

“I love this kingdom. I wouldn’t change who I am for anything in the world. That means that there are many things that might remain impossible to me, many things that you know I can’t promise you and—”

 

Ava cupped her hands around Alex’s face. “I don’t want promises,” she whispered. “I don’t do well with them. I do well with this. This moment. Making this moment…last a lifetime. That’s my expertise.”

 

“Can you do that?” asked Alex breathlessly.

 

Ava trailed her hands slowly down Alex’s throat, over the curve of her breasts, along the sweep of her waist, down the edge of her thighs, where she paused to gather into her hands bunches of Alex’s dress. Alex’s heart pounded, her breath a staccato and uncertain racing rhythm, as she tried to fight off the swirling light-headedness that her body interpreted as _Ava, Ava_.

 

Ava tipped a wicked smile at Alex and said, “That is my specialty,” and pulled Alex’s dress up, up, up. Alex lifted her arms automatically, feeling all of the dress’s floating layers seem to dissolve around her as Ava pulled them up and off.

 

And then over the side of the terrace.

 

Alex, surprised, glanced down as it fluttered to settle atop the Bay of Thaddeus.

 

Ava said, “My turn.”

 

Alex looked back at Ava, hesitated. It wasn’t like she’d done this before. And especially not with Euphonian clothes.

 

Ava picked up the trailing sash of her shirt and put it in Alex’s hand, touch lingering as she closed Alex’s fingers around the fabric. “Tug,” she murmured on a breath.

 

Alex tugged, transfixed, and the cloth fell away, spilling Ava’s breasts forward.

 

Alex remembered belatedly to toss the shirt over the edge of the terrace, too busy staring at Ava’s breasts.

 

Ava said, “You can touch.”

 

Alex took a breath and then brought her hands up carefully, cupping Ava’s breasts, running a curious thumb over Ava’s nipples, watching them harden in reaction, listening to Ava’s indrawn breath.

 

Ava said, “The way you look at me. Fuck, the way you _look_ at me,” and then suddenly Alex found herself pulled in, kissed, devoured, the sort of kiss that made it impossible to remember anything so mundane as your location in the world.

 

So Alex shouldn’t have been surprised to find herself on the bed. It seemed utterly natural. Ava sprawled over her, Ava’s breasts pressing against hers, Ava, paused, suspended, looking down at her.

 

And then Ava reached out and pulled a diamond out of Alex’s hair. Alex felt a section of her hair fall out of its coil, pool beside her on the pillow. Ava put the diamond aside without a second glance, eyes focused on Alex’s hair, as if Alex’s hair was the more wondrous of the two treasures. She kept removing diamonds, patient and slow, while Alex’s hair loosened into cascades all around her and the only sound was their breaths periodically tearing through the room.

 

When the last diamond was out, when Alex’s hair was spread heavily over the pillow, Ava leaned forward and pressed her face into it, breathing deep. Alex shifted underneath her, clutching Ava closer, wanting to pull Ava entirely inside.

 

But Ava drew back, and Alex made a small sound of protest, until Ava slowly wriggled out of her Euphonian trousers and then settled back over Alex. For a long moment, Ava looked down at her and Alex looked back up, Ava’s eyes impossibly dark and Alex feeling…impossibly trusting. In a way she wasn’t sure she had her entire life. Alex stopped thinking.

 

Ava kissed her. Kissed her mouth, slow and thorough, until Alex was moaning and shifting and gasping into her. She kissed down her neck, and the hollow of her throat, and Alex tipped her head back to give her as much access as possible, to indicate to Ava that she wanted all of her, _all of her_ …

 

Ava pulled a nipple into her mouth, laved her tongue around it, sucked gently, and Alex closed her hands in Ava’s hair to keep her _just there_ and arched toward her, feeling greedy and desperate, as if Ava was the only thing in the world that mattered at just that moment.

 

Ava kissed her belly, hot open-mouthed kisses that leaked warmth into Alex’s skin, through her whole body, until she felt overheated and restless. She slid her hand between Alex’s legs, and Alex gasped Ava’s name, and Ava said something Alex was far too gone to interpret, as Ava teased, and teased, and Alex shifted restlessly, trying to get _more_ from her.

 

Ava’s hand stilled. Her free hand reached up and took one of Alex’s hands out of her hair and pressed it over the hand Ava had cupped against Alex.

 

Then Ava, hands in place, moved to look down at Alex, her gaze hot and fierce. “Show me how you want it,” she said.

 

And Alex, feeling as slow as the honey that leaked out of beehives during the summer, feeling as light as the seagulls that wheeled over the baby, feeling as incandescent of the burst of the sun just after rising, moved her hand against Ava’s, moved Ava’s hand against her, and chased the honey and the seagulls and the sun until they all collided inside of her.

 

***

 

There was no missing King David of Euphonia’s second arrival in Jadenvale. He arrived with two trains’ worth of attendants and wedding finery. Including a small menagerie. Archer heard the squawking and honking and barking from his room, and rushed to the terrace, and peered at the train station above his head, and couldn’t help the fact that he grinned.

 

He was waiting in the courtyard, Trix a few steps behind him, when Bennet rode in, on a shaggy Euphonian horse, his royal blue cloak settled about him, behind a procession of furred soldiers on other shaggy Euphonian horses, all of them bearing fluttering Euphonian blue banners branded with Euphonian stars. Behind Bennet stretched a straggly line of people and animals.

 

Bennet rode his horse past the soldiers in front, kicking him into a quick trot to reach the palace steps, where Archer stood and waited.

 

“Well,” remarked Archer. “This is an entrance.”

 

Bennet grinned and said, “Hello, Trix,” and kicked his way out of the saddle, cloak fluttering around him.

 

Archer refused to admit that was hot.

 

Bennet said, “I have come to ask for the hand of the Only Prince in marriage.” He brandished a piece of paper that Archer assumed was the signed treaty.

 

“You are going to fucking faint in that clothing you’re wearing,” Archer informed him primly. “And how many animals did you bring with you? Did you think we had a shortage of animals in Jadenvale?”

 

“Everyone wanted to bring their pets.” Bennet was walking slowly up the steps toward Archer. “It was fucking ridiculous and I couldn’t be bothered to negotiate about it. Did you miss me?”

 

“No,” said Archer. “Not even a little bit.”

 

Bennet pulled him in by the waist and said, “I fucking love you,” and smile-kissed him.

 

Archer, with relief, re-started his mental clock of Minutes Since You’ve Been Kissed by Bennet.

 

***

 

“If your sister tries to separate us tonight,” said Bennet, looking at his reflection in the mirror, “I’m going to have to start a war. I’m sorry, but that’s all there is to it.”

 

“She won’t,” Archer said. “She told me she doesn’t care about the protocol anymore and we can do as we wish as it’s our marriage.”

 

Bennet, putting his crown on his head, gave Archer a wry look. “Really? She couldn’t have come to that realization before I had to do all that fucking negotiating over the treaty?”

 

“I think Ava may have given her a newly found sense of perspective.”

 

“Ava?” Bennet stared at Archer. “Ava and _Alex_? I thought Ava liked Alice.”

 

“While you were gone, the world went entirely topsy-turvy,” said Archer.

 

“Obviously. How did you cope?”

 

“By not missing you _at all_ ,” said Archer.

 

“You are a fucking liar,” said Bennet, “as recent events in that bed right over there would indicate.”

 

Archer looked at the rumpled filthy sheets on his bed and said, “We’ve got to get someone in to change those.”

 

There was a knock on the door.

 

Bennet called out, “Please don’t be Roderick.”

 

From the other side of the door came, “It’s Ava. Are you dressed?”

 

Bennet opened the door and said, “I am shocked at your implication. Look at you. You look beautiful. The Jadenvalian style suits you,” because Ava was dressed in a light flowing gown.

 

“Lots of things about Jadenvale suit Ava,” remarked Archer.

 

“Your choice of a consort is terribly cheeky,” Ava told Bennet. “I hope you’re ready to deal with that for the rest of your life.”

 

“I plan to keep his mouth occupied with things other than being cheeky.”

 

“Not an image I needed,” said Ava.

 

Bennet said, “I meant I was going to keep it occupied with _my mouth_. You have a filthy brain.” Bennet tapped Ava’s head fondly.

 

“It’s been said.” Ava took a breath. “So. Listen.”

 

Bennet frowned thoughtfully. “Uh-oh. Are we having a serious conversation?”

 

“I know,” said Ava. “I know you’re supposed to be going to your engagement ball, like, right now. And I don’t mean to delay that. Except that then tomorrow you’re getting married, and then you’ll go on a honeymoon, and we won’t get to talk.”

 

Bennet considered her for a second, and then realized he’d been terribly selfish, allowing himself to get wrapped up in Archer and not making a point to pull Ava aside and talk to her about the future. “No. You’re right. Let’s talk.”

 

“I should go,” Archer said. “I’ll just—”

 

“No,” Ava said. “What I have to say concerns both of you so I’d rather…talk to both of you at the same time.”

 

Bennet studied Ava, who looked so uncharacteristically serious. The last time he had seen her this serious, she had told him she was pregnant. “Are you alright?” he asked slowly, trying to brace himself for whatever was coming next.

 

Ava nodded. She said, “While you were gone, convincing the council to let you marry Archer, it occurred to me that it was an excellent arrangement for Euphonia in all respects but one: It’s complicated your succession.”

 

Next to him, Archer went still. Bennet sensed it. He gave him a quizzical look and then turned back to Ava. “Yes,” he admitted. “About that. I’ve been meaning to talk to you about the fact—”

 

“About the fact that my baby’s going to be the heir,” Ava said. “That’s what you told the council, isn’t it?”

 

Bennet hesitated, trying to think how best to phrase it. He ended up with: “Yes. But, Ava, you had to have realized that—”

 

“I know,” Ava cut him off, and she looked…fond. Not the least bit angry. She said, “I know, Bennet. I might have known as soon as I realized I was pregnant. For as much as I want this baby to be whatever they want to be, there is one thing I know they will have to be, and that’s Euphonia’s monarch. But the thing is—I’ve learned recently—that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s not a bad thing to have to take care of a kingdom, to have a kingdom be an integral part of you. It’s not a bad thing if you remember to be a person and a kingdom both.” Ava looked at Archer. “And you said that, Archer, remember? You said that you and I, of all people, would know how to raise this baby as a monarch without losing sight of the person.”

 

“I think you and I are _experts_ in it,” said Archer.

 

Ava smiled at him. She said, “Which is why I want you to be primary caregiver for the baby. Both of you.” She looked back to Bennet, still smiling.

 

Bennet stared at her, speechless.

 

Archer said, “What?”

 

“I know it’s a lot,” Ava said. “I know you’re just getting started together. And I don’t mean to say that I’m _giving_ you the baby and walking away and not being involved, because that’s not what I mean. But I’ve always been worried that I’m not going to be the best mother, that there’s a piece of me that just will never belong to that world, and I can’t do this alone, I don’t want to do this alone.”

 

Bennet managed, “You were never going to be alone—”

 

“Right. But I want that to be formal, Bennet. I want this baby to be, fully, _ours_ , all together, and we raise him or her or it or them in Euphonia. And I’m going to try to stay put, and be better, for the baby, but if I’m not, then there’s you, the two of you, always there, steady and loving the way that I know you are, you because you raised me already, and you because you have more love to give than any person I’ve ever met, Archer. You can’t have children. I want you to have mine. At least think about it.”

 

There was a knock on the door.

 

Bennet called out, “Come in,” automatically, without considering whether it was a prudent time for an interruption.

 

Roderick said impatiently, “Your Highness and Your Majesty are very late.”

 

“Fuck,” said Archer, “we’re supposed to be going to a _ball_ right now.”

 

“Terrible timing,” Ava said. “I always have such terrible timing. I’m definitely going to have this baby in the middle of the coldest night of the year when the wind is howling through the chimneys in the palace and we can barely keep a fire lit.”

 

“Wait,” said Archer, “you have nights when you can’t have _fires_? How fucking cold does _that_ get?”

 

Ava, after a second, laughed.

 

Archer grumbled, “I’m just _saying_.”

 

“Bennet will keep you warm with the royal cloak, won’t you?” said Ava, and winked, and walked out of the room.

 

As if she hadn’t just offered something hugely momentous.

 

Roderick said, in clipped tones, “ _Very_ late.”

 

Bennet looked at Archer and opened his mouth.

 

Archer shook his head. “Not now. We haven’t time to discuss it now. After the ball.”

 

“You want me to go to a ball and make diplomatic small talk all night with _that_ in my most recent memory?”

 

“No. I want you to go to the ball and mull it all over and stand on the sidelines looking devastatingly handsome so everyone can speculate about how I’m marrying you for the spectacular sex.”

 

Bennet considered. “Fair enough,” he decided.

 

***

 

Archer had thought, long ago, that he would consider his engagement ball a success if no major diplomatic crisis occurred during it. If war was not declared, then they were ahead of the game, in Archer’s view.

 

War was not declared, although Bennet was clearly preoccupied for most of the evening, until Archer introduced the Euphonian musicians he’d arranged, and he made Bennet show off Euphonian folk dancing, and he knew they scandalized all the Jadenvalians but it was worth it for the way Bennet grinned at him and kissed him afterward.

 

And then later, so much later, they fell into bed together, too exhausted for other occupations, too distracted for them.

 

Archer said, where he was curled into Bennet, “You barely touched the starlight.”

 

“I learned my lesson with starlight,” said Bennet absently, staring up at the ceiling, his fingers tracing a path up and down Archer’s arm.

 

Archer let a moment of silence fall. “Are you thinking about Ava and the baby?”

 

“Yes,” said Bennet. “I’m thinking that…I think I assumed always that I would help to raise the baby, that the baby would be raised under my household. I think I didn’t expect Ava to be so…” Bennet shifted to his side, brushed Archer’s hair off his forehead. “It would be a lot to ask of you. We never fully discussed it. But the baby would have to be—”

 

“I want it,” Archer heard himself admit in a rush.

 

By the moonlight in the room, Archer saw Bennet blink. “You do?”

 

“I know this sounds crazy. But I was really sad over the idea of never getting to have a child. Over you never getting to be a father. Over…Wait. Here.” Archer scrambled out of bed, went to his desk, opened the top drawer, and pulled out the pile of letters he’d written Bennet. “I wasn’t going to show you these,” he said, lighting a lamp on his way back to bed. “They’re so humiliating. But I…” Archer, shrugging, handed Bennet the pile of letters. “I wrote you letters, while you were away.”

 

Bennet smiled down at them. “I wrote you letters, too.”

 

Archer was both surprised and relieved. “Did you?”

 

“I wrote incredibly soppy love letters to you. You would hate them.”

 

“I want to see them,” Archer said. “So I can, you know, make fun of them.”

 

“You don’t fool me for a second,” Bennet said, “you really don’t. Do you want me to read the letters?”

 

Archer, after a moment’s hesitation, swallowed thickly and then nodded.

 

And then sat, while Bennet read through the letters, smiling and chuckling in places, and then set the last one down.

 

And then Bennet turned to Archer and picked up his hands and said very seriously, “An heir is coming to Euphonia. What say my consort?”

 

“Glad tidings,” said Archer, and smiled when Bennet leaned forward and kissed him.

 

***

 

Archer had a million tailors fussing around him and he wasn’t happy with any of them because none of them were understanding his command to add Euphonian touches to the Jadenvalian suit they’d made him.

 

Then there was a knock on the door and Felix stuck his head around it and said, “I am actually a wedding present to you. His Excellence thought you might need me. I don’t normally allow myself to be given as a gift, but there you have it.”

 

“Felix!” exclaimed Archer. “I am fucking happy to see you. Come in here and fix these sleeves.”

 

So Felix, grinning, fixed Archer’s sleeves for him and was the only tailor left in the room when there was another knock on the door and Alex announced herself.

 

“I’ll just go,” Felix said. “I think you’re done anyway.”

 

“Thank you,” Archer said fervently. “You were a lifesaver.”

 

“You have a wise husband-to-be,” said Felix.

 

“Don’t tell him, he’s already smug about it,” said Archer, and Felix laughed as he walked through the door.

 

Archer gave his reflection one last critical look—a pale suit set off by a tie he’d chosen in the deep royal blue of Euphonia—and then turned to Alex. “Will I do?”

 

Alex’s smile was wide and her eyes were suspiciously wet. “Marvelously,” she said, and then just stood and looked at him for a moment.

 

Archer, not sure what to do, fidgeted.

 

Alex said, “Oh, little prince. We are going to miss you around here.”

 

“I’ll come visit,” Archer said. “And you should come to Euphonia.”

 

“Maybe I will,” Alex said. “Just to make sure he’s treating you properly.”

 

“And also Ava will be there,” said Archer.

 

Alex smiled and picked up Archer’s diadem where it had been resting on his dresser and settled it carefully on his head. “Go marry your king, Only Prince.”

 

***

 

Archer, in his room, newly Prince Consort of Euphonia, was trying to take off the royal cloak Bennet had settled over his shoulders during the wedding ceremony, because Archer wanted to see the brooch Bennet had used to fasten it. People had been complimenting it all night, while Archer had been dying in the oppressive heat of the extra layer of fabric, and Archer was desperate to see what it was. And also, maybe, to get out of it.

 

Except Bennet refastened the brooch as soon as Archer got it unfastened and said, “No, no, no, don’t get undressed.”

 

Archer stared at him. “You realize that’s the opposite of what you’re supposed to be saying to me. It’s our _wedding night_.”

 

“Do you really think I’d have us spend our wedding night in a palace, silly prince of mine?”

 

“Silly prince _consort_ ,” Archer corrected him.

 

“Silly prince _consort_ of mine,” Bennet said. “Let’s sneak out of the palace.”

 

Archer shook his head. “I would ordinarily love and support this idea but we can’t go incognito in town tonight. We’d never pull it off. Likenesses of us have been everywhere—”

 

“Archer, we didn’t pull it off _last_ time.”

 

“Okay, true,” Archer conceded the point. “But I don’t think people will leave us alone—”

 

“They won’t need to. We’re not going incognito. I’ve arranged a surprise.”

 

Archer studied him, looking for a hint. “What kind of surprise?”

 

“Sneak out of the palace with me and I’ll show you.”

 

“Is the surprise in your trousers?” asked Archer.

 

Bennet laughed and kissed him and then took the diadem off his head. “Don’t want to lose it,” he said. “Okay, let’s go.”

 

Archer wasn’t sure they successfully snuck out of the palace so much as nobody wanted to bother them. In the distance, at any rate, the commoners still seemed to be celebrating the royal wedding, and Bennet kept them well away from the ongoing revelry, and nobody paid them any attention when there was free-flowing starlight to be had.

 

Bennet led them down to the shore, where lights still burned in celebration and banners had been hung with Archer and Bennet’s joint coat of arms.

 

And where Bertie was waiting.

 

“Hello, Bertie,” Bennet said heartily, as if they were old friends.

 

“Hello, Your Majesty,” Bertie replied.

 

Archer looked between them in confusion.

 

“I contacted Bertie,” Bennet said, “because I had a very important question: Was it possible for us to spend the night on a boat?”

 

***

 

The boat Bennet had procured for them was rocking gently underneath them and Archer was finally free of the oppressive Euphonian cloak—well, free of any clothing at all, actually—and he was studying his brooch in the lamplight.

 

Bennet said, “Had I known you’d spend more time admiring it than me, I would have gotten you an uglier jewel,” and bit at Archer’s exposed rear end.

 

“What are these stones?” Archer asked, frowning at the brooch.

 

“Well, the center stone is a sapphire. Euphonian blue, but also, I thought, like the blue of the bay which I know you love so much here—”

 

“Not that,” Archer said. “I know what that is. What are the little black stones all around it?”

 

Bennet finally seemed to give up what he was doing, crawling up Archer’s body to sprawl over him and look at the jewel in his hand. “It’s sand,” Bennet said. “From The Lake. A stone the color of Jadenvalian water, stones from the only Euphonian water. I thought you’d like it. Do you not like it?”

 

“No,” Archer said. “It’s not that. I mean, I love it, of course I love it, it’s beautiful and I love it and I love my cloak, but—The Lake has black sand?”

 

“Yes,” Bennet said, looking confused. “I suppose I never said that in so many words, but—yes. It’s the opposite of the white sand you have here. Is that because it’s cold? Frozen?”

 

Archer stared at Bennet, putting pieces together in his head. “Bennet,” he said.

 

“Archer.” Bennet looked alarmed. “Is something wrong? I really didn’t mean to upset you with the brooch. If you don’t like it, we can—”

 

“My mother had a chest of treasures.”

 

“I know. You wrote about it in one of your letters to me.”

 

“She had a vial of black sand.”

 

“From The Lake?”

 

Archer shook his head.

 

“From another lake like our lake?” guessed Bennet.

 

“She said—she told my sister—it was from a land where the mountains sometimes exploded with fire and rained hot ashes to the ground.”

 

“Really?” said Bennet. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

 

“The Euphonian mountains don’t do that?” Archer asked.

 

“Euphonia is a land of snow, not fire. You know that.”

 

Archer thought of mountains that rained fire and the melting Euphonian glacier. Archer looked at the brooch in his hand, looked at the black sand glittering darkly. And he put it carefully aside. There was nothing he could do at the moment. Not without data. Not without information. Not without getting to see the mountain himself. And it was better not to alarm Bennet, who was stretched out so happily next to him. So Archer said, very casually, “When do we go back to Euphonia?” And nipped at Bennet’s right nipple to add extra distraction.

 

Bennet said, “Tomorrow we are going to honeymoon in the same inn where you first seduced me. I’ve procured the same room and everything.”

 

“I didn’t seduce you,” Archer said. “You seduced me. It was horrible. You stole your sister’s betrothed. Shocking.”

 

“I am a king of very filthy and dubious morals,” said Bennet.

 

“Are you?” said Archer. “Show me.”

 

***

 

Alice came upon a strange man sleeping on their dining room table.

 

She supposed that was normal behavior for the day after a royal wedding. She’d never been alive for one before, so she couldn’t say for sure.

 

She did say, loudly, “I was hoping to have breakfast.”

 

And the strange man snorted himself awake and then sat up and looked at her. “Oh. Hello. Sorry. I’m Felix. And I couldn’t find my bedroom last night.”

 

“I’ve noticed,” said Alice. “This is a dining room.”

 

“Right. Flat surface. That was really all I was looking for. Flat surface that wasn’t the floor. The floor’s filthy.” Felix cheerfully picked himself up off the table. “Lovely wedding. Did you enjoy yourself?”

 

“I suppose so,” said Alice.

 

“Are you from Jadenvale?” asked Felix, apparently honestly not recognizing her.

 

Alice decided not to correct him. “Yes,” she said. “I am.”

 

“I’m not,” said Felix. “But I apprenticed here and it’s lovely to be back. Nice to wear less clothing for a little while. Although wearing less clothing would put me out of a job. Have you ever been to Euphonia?”

 

“No,” said Alice, bewildered by Felix’s waterfall of conversation.

 

Felix said, “Oh, you should go! It’s beautiful in its own way. And, really, there is not enough tourism between the two kingdoms. We should be visiting each other all the time. We could nip down here for a spot of sun, you could nip up there for a spot of skiing, it would all work out.”

 

“Skiing?” echoed Alice.

 

“See? You don’t even know what skiing is. Sad for you,” said Felix, and drew his finger down Alice’s nose.

 

Alice was so shocked she felt her mouth drop open.

 

Then Felix said, “I should really be finding the rest of the retinue, before they leave for Euphonia without me. If you would like to come along, you should.”

 

And then Felix winked.

 

***

 

Ava woke to Alex sitting in bed next to her, looking down at her thoughtfully.

 

Ava stretched luxuriously and asked good-naturedly, “Do you ever sleep?”

 

“I suppose you’ll be going soon,” was Alex’s reply. “Back to Euphonia. Back to…I mean, you are giving birth to the heir, are you not?”

 

Ava was silent for a long time, admiring this sun-drenched, airy room that she had spent so much time in over the past few days. And then she said, “I don’t have to go back immediately. But yes. Eventually. And probably for a while.” She looked back at Alex. “But isn’t that a problem for another day? And that’s my specialty: this moment.”

 

“Making this moment last forever,” said Alex.

 

Ava, hand possessively on Alex’s hip, said, “Yes.”

 

 

 

 

_The end._


End file.
